The Irony of Orson Scott Card

Warning: Major spoilers for Ender's Game and its sequels

Something I have been waiting for since I was in middle school happened this weekend: Ender's Game was finally made into a movie. Though the book was written in 1985, it took decades to produce a screenplay that could acceptably portray the plot's conflict (a good deal of which takes place in the protagonist's head) and negotiate the extreme young age of the main characters (they were aged in the film) and the violence they experience (which was muted somewhat). The book has been a favorite of middle and high school English classes for quite some time and that sentimentality could easily have been expected to lay the groundwork for the next major young adult franchise, a la Hunger Games or Harry Potter.

However, publicity for Ender's Game has focused on one very rough edge: the author, Orson Scott Card's controversial political statements, especially in regards to gay marriage. It is not so much that he is against gay marriage that has worried so many, it is the sharp rhetoric he employs in his opinion pieces and essays. From threatening to destroy the US government once it had become his "mortal enemy" to suggesting that it is plausible that President Obama might set out to establish a dictatorship for life, with Michelle at its head, enforced by private armies of "young out-of-work urban men" (emphasis added) who "will do beatings and murders" of groups that oppose Obama, as opposed to "drive-by shootings in their own neighborhoods."

But this version of Orson Scott Card is radically different from the one I knew. Though I have met him, once, and he really was quite pleasant, the messages and themes of his books (at least the Ender series) seem to be diametrically opposed to the rhetoric strategy he employs personally. It is unfortunate to me, as an apparent response to Card, that entertainment media has seemed to try and damage the potential success of the Ender's Game film by worrying about the editing of the promotional trailers, unflatteringly reviewing the film as "harmless", and, in one of the most asinine pieces I have ever read, suggesting the 28-year-old story is derivative of films made in the last several years.

This is unfortunate to me because if you have a problem with Card, you should see Ender's Game. There is no better argument for softened rhetoric, constructive dialogue, and pacifism than the story of Ender Wiggin.

For nearly the entirety of Ender's Game, we are left unaware of the motives of the alien fleet that invaded earth and left millions dead. They were successively pushed back, but now the human fleet has reached their homeworld. Not one of the aliens has ever been captured alive and no communication has been possible. Believing that he is directing a simulation and unaware that he is commanding an actual attack, Ender ends up destroying the alien planet and eradicating the entire species.

It is only after he learns this that the reader looks back on the anti-alien propaganda throughout the book as the danger it was. The aliens only understood the universe from a hive mentality and were unaware of the damage they had caused. Ender despairs that he was deceived into a victory that did not first pursue peace and feels sick to his being at its price. At the book's end, he discovers a way to communicate with the last surviving member of the alien species and vows to help her kind reflourish and to speak for the dead.

Without delving into too much detail, the plot of the sequel, "Speaker for the Dead" also revolves around a tragic misunderstanding that threatens further bloodshed. Only a moderating dialogue calms the tensions down in the book's conclusion.

The point is: Orson Scott Card's early books warned of what happens when we dehumanize an enemy, what happens when we let fear dictate our words and actions, and, most importantly, when constructive dialogue disappears.

I personally believe that as many people as possible should still read and see Ender's Game as it has one of the most profound statements on the value of communication. Orson Scott Card should not be silenced, but rather he should seek to soften his rhetoric. Neither he nor his opponents should address the other in degrading or inflammatory terms or seek to muffle each other. Only this way can true dialogue occur.

As Ender said, “I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”