People often ask how such a warmongering asshole as Orson Scott Card could write a beautiful, humane, anti-war novel like Ender's Game. I have come to believe that he did not. Which is not to say that Card did not write the book; rather, it is not the beautiful, humane, anti-war novel which people think they have read.
The book people experience when they read Ender's Game is very different from what the book contains, because the book which Card intended is so morally disgusting that it simply does not occur to most readers that it could possibly mean what it does. People cannot help but radically misread it.
John Kessel's Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality makes the horrible truth clear.
We see the effects of displaced, righteous rage everywhere around us, written in violence and justified as moral action, even compassion. Ender gets to strike out at his enemies and still remain morally clean. Nothing is his fault. Stilson already lies defeated on the ground, yet Ender can kick him in the face until he dies, and still remain the good guy. Ender can drive bone fragments into Bonzo’s brain and then kick his dying body in the crotch, yet the entire focus is on Ender’s suffering.
2 comments:
Found through a post by Vinay, I've recently finished listening to most (bar a few adjacent from the main Ender, Bean and First Contact story lines. I found the christian overtones loud but overall the writing to be extremely beautiful. I'm not aware of much of Orson's views outside of the wiki profile but if you're interested in chatting about such a small thing during such intense times it would mean a fair bit to me. :) I assume my email will be attached but let me know otherwise. live long and prosper
1993, I'm afraid I don't know how to contact you. But do drop me a line.
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