Who is ender

He built a raft and spent his time alone in contemplation and self-resentment. The International Fleet, worried that he will not cooperate with them due to his lack of interest, sent Graff to meet with Valentine after school. She was reluctant to trust him again, but he convinced her by stating how he knew Demosthenes's true identity. Graff took her to the mansion by a lake where Ender was staying.

Valentine, during her visit, reminded him why he is fighting: to preserve the human race. After these three months spent in self-contemplation, Ender moved on to Command School , almost six years early, to learn to combat the Formics in space instead of being restricted to the more abstract training games. He was taught by Mazer Rackham , the one who saved humanity during the Second Invasion , and the first man to realize that the Formics are actually a hive mind.

There had been no way of communicating with the Formics, and they had shown no inclination to spare humanity of their wrath; thus, plans for an invasion had been underway, and it was the command of this invasion that Ender was being trained for.

Fortunately, he was augmented by a cadre of his best friends and the best commanders from Battle School, including Alai, Petra, Dink, and Bean ; Ender assigned them to individual flights or squadrons of ships while he remains in overall charge. Once the team had meshed, the training began, against a simulator controlled by Mazer Rackham.

Ender and his Jeesh began to fight ever-more-challenging battles, in which his team frequently fought outnumbered by the enemy, who quickly learned to adapt to Ender's tactics.

Ender began to be plagued by mysterious nightmares which interrupted his sleep. Fatigued in mind and body, his team slowly succumbing to exhaustion, Ender started to lose hope. In Ender's final exam before graduating from Command School, he and his team found themselves in possession of a small fleet, approaching a planet literally swarming with Formic ships, outnumbering his own force a thousand to one. Ender, by then, had had enough of being manipulated by the adults, and decided to flunk out of Command School—a true victory for him.

He duplicated his final battle at Battle School and used the Molecular Disruption Device to destroy the planet around which the Formic fleet is orbiting taking the surrounding fleet with it , demonstrating that he was far too ruthless to be trusted with command of an actual battle fleet. However, when the simulation ended, Ender discovered that the "audience" watching his "final exam" was now in jubilation and delight. Rackham and Graff told Ender that he had not been playing a game, and had never played against Rackham, but instead had been commanding real ships across interstellar distances; the task made possible via the ansible , a form of instantaneous communication making use of Philotic energy.

This technology was discovered following the Second Formic War, as the method of telepathic communication the Formics used was reverse engineered. He had just commanded the fleet attacking the Formic Homeworld , and destroyed their entire species once and for all. When Ender learned that he had been playing a game with real people's lives, he lapsed into four days of exhausted depression, completely void of reality, drifting in and out of sleep.

Feeling the full weight of the deaths he had caused, made heavier by his apparent love and respect of the Formics, developed over his interaction with them, he refused to respond to anyone for a time. Immediately after the end of the Formic War, the Hegemony fell apart and war broke out on Earth in a dispute about who was to gain control of Ender.

The battle lasted all of five days, but the impact was clear: Ender cannot return to Earth because he would simply be used as a tool of the dominant government on Earth. Fearing for Ender, Valentine blackmailed Peter, who was in position to becoming a world leader, into leaving Ender in peace, allowing him to be sent out on one of the first colonization ships as the governor of the new colony on a former Formic world. Ender's fame quickly wore off, replaced with the respect of the colonists traveling with him.

Years later, after the colony was established and Valentine had written a seven-book history of the Formic Wars , Ender discovered something that the Formics left for him; by using their alien telepathic communication, they were able to extract images from Ender's brain, which were the source of his nightmares during his time at Command School. Using those images, the Formics built a large scene directly taken from the Mind Game at the Battle School.

Following the steps from the Fantasy Game, Ender discovered the surprise the Formics left for him: their last surviving Hive Queen , in pupal form. The pupa was able to communicate telepathically with Ender, who learned that the Formics' previous killing of humans had rested on the mistaken notion that humans were not sentient, and once the Formics realized their mistake, they resolved not to attack humans again.

Thus, the invasion and extermination of the Formics was not necessary to defend Earth. Ender wrote about the Formics from their perspective. With her, he wrote up a treaty that would define the relationship between humans, Pequeninos, and Formics on Lusitania. Although Andrew would not make any promises for The Hive Queen's actions, he swore to allow the Pequeninos to have access to her and her technology.

Humans and the Pequeninos would maintain their own lands and not kill one another, and the Pequeninos would not make war with other tribes of their species either. To make the treaty a reality, Andrew was forced to "plant" Human - a sacred ritual to the Pequeninos, which would bring one into the "Third Life".

It was very hard for Andrew to do, but he performed the ordinance as ordered. He signed the treaty as "Ender Wiggin", revealing his true identity as Ender the Xenocide to Novinha and the others.

Novinha realized that because he'd wiped out an entire species, Andrew hadn't judged her for her adultery. The revelation brought Andrew and Novinha close emotionally. He later introduced Jane to Miro, and they soon had a close bond. Andrew's sister Valentine, now twenty years older, had told him that she decided to go to Lusitania with her husband Jakt.

Miro left Lusitania on the Havelok to meet Valentine's ship at a halfway point. Andrew began his life on the planet. He was now married to Novinha and knew his life work was complete. Yet, a new challenge awaited him - Starways Congress had sent a Lusitania Fleet , armed with the Molecular Disruption Device to destroy the planet and the virus with it.

During the three decades waiting for Valentine and the Lusitania Fleet to arrive, Andrew befriended a talented Pequenino scientist named Planter. He often visited Human, now a fully grown Fathertree, and spent much of his time with his own family. His stepchildren had become the top scientists on the planet. They were all working tirelessly to fight the Descolada virus. When his stepdaughter Quara Ribeira theorized that the Descolada was a sentient organism and that wiping it out would be xenocide, Andrew encouraged further study and told the family not to reveal their findings to anyone outside the field until more was known.

Quara ignored this directive and informed the Fathertrees that the humans were hoping to annihilate the virus that the Pequeninos needed to live.

Andrew chastened her for this revelation and told the Fathertrees himself that more research was being done, but it was too late. The Fathertrees had already decided to send Pequeninos to leave Lusitania with the Descolada still alive in them, in order to preserve their species from destruction by either the human scientists or the Lusitania Fleet.

They contacted The Hive Queen and asked them to create a starship that would let them get off the planet. Andrew was present when Miro returned from space, along with Valentine, her family, and Plikt.

Due to the effects of relativistic space travel, Miro had only aged a few weeks during his thirty years of spaceflight. Andrew and Valentine rejoiced in their reunion. Falling instantly back to the sarcastic banter that had defined their relationship for nearly three millennia, the two were glad to be together again. In the visit, Andrew learned that he was correct in his guess that the Queen was building ships to take the Formics and the Pequeninos off Lusitania.

In their conversation, The Hive Queen promised Andrew that she would not kill any humans by leaving Lusitania; the Formics would purge the Descolada on their ships once they had left the planet. Late into the night a few days later, Jane contacted Andrew, warning him that a girl named Han Qing-jao on the planet Path was close to uncovering Demosthenes' true identity and Jane's own plan of making the Lusitania Fleet "disappear".

Andrew replied with subvocalizing into his Jewel Implant. However, Novinha heard him silently talking, and it bothered her. Andrew promised her he would try to find a way for her to leave the Ansible network and exist on her own, but she had to truly figure out what she was first - she had to find her soul. The next day, Andrew participated in a meeting with the colony's leaders, where he supported his Catholic Priest stepson Quim Ribeira's plan to convert a forest of heretic Pequeninos.

His relationship with Novinha would not last much longer. She was angry with him for his relationship with Jane and for supporting Quim's mission to the Pequeninos. She remained silent for days, but finally exploded at him with hateful insults. Andrew led the recovery party when it was discovered that Quim had been captured by the heretic Fathertree Warmaker and his forest. He and his party found Quim's body, and they sent back word to Milagre that the priest was dead.

A few days later, Andrew sought out Novinha. She had taken the news of Quim's death very hard and had joined the Children of the Mind of Christ , a monastic order for married couples. When he went there to speak with her, she refused reconciliation, instead choosing to focus on her service to Christ. Andrew sought out The Hive Queen to see if she had any information on the concept of faster-than-light travel. She had nothing to offer on that subject, but instead revealed to him Jane's true origin.

Once in this body, the philotes created connections between different beings. The Formics called upon a philote to enter Andrew's body when he was at Battle School, hoping that it would create a connection with them and him.

Instead, the philote bonded with the Mind Game , which Andrew had been focusing on greatly at the time. The philote used the connection to build a bridge between Andrew and the Hive Queens. Its "body" was not a part of the ansible network as was thought, but was a part of Andrew. It explained why Andrew and Jane were so closely tied to one another. The theory of calling on philotes from their home space opened the door for Grego and Olhado Ribeira to come up with a way to make faster-than-light travel possible.

They thought that if a person could call on the philotes that made them to return home, they could then call on those to create the pattern of the location to which they wished to travel.

It would require a powerful memory to maintain the traveler's philotic pattern, and prevent it from dispersing in the other dimension. Jane had a memory powerful enough to remember the patterns of a few potential travelers. Miro, Ela, and Andrew were assigned to travel into this " Outside " space and test the theory. Once in the Outside, Andrew and his party needed to focus on their own philotic patterns.

Andrew tried to do so, but was shocked to see that somehow, the philotes had created new versions of his siblings Peter and Valentine, with their personalities patterned after Andrew's memories of them. He was shocked to meet these new "children", Peter II and Valentine II , who had the physical appearance of their predecessors in their teen years.

Despite this distraction, Andrew helped Ela create her Descolada antivirus, the Recolada , in the Outside. The Recolada was successful, and the Descolada was eradicated on Lusitania. Once he was back on the planet, Andrew had to deal with the results of his journey to the Outside - his creation of clones of his siblings.

He refused to ever go back Outside, fearing that he would make more reincarnations of Peter and Valentine. Novinha reached out to Andrew and asked if he would visit her at the monastery. She invited him to join her among the Children of the Mind of Christ, and he eventually accepted.

Later, Novinha found Andrew asleep in the monastery's gardens, struggling to breathe. His wife called for help, and several of the monks came to offer assistance. Andrew lay dying in the monastery, with his one-time student Plikt watching over him. She wanted to Speak his Death and had devoted her life to studying him.

She was there when he spoke one word from his unconscious state: "Peter". Why he called out the name of his dead brother, or the clone from the Outside was unclear, but it led to a confrontation between Plikt, Novinha, and Valentine. They set aside their differences when Andrew awoke briefly and spoke to them.

Jane was forced from her computer network home shortly before Andrew was to die. He thrashed around on his deathbed, injuring Novinha, Valentine, and Plikt. Jane's soul left, and Andrew regained consciousness briefly. When he awoke, Novinha told him that he could leave her. She loved him and knew he loved her, but he was okay to die. Andrew smiled and knew what to do. The shell of Andrew Wiggin that remained on the bed dissolved, leaving only a few hairs from his head.

He did not have all of Andrew's memories, but felt a shadow of them in his new life. Ender was a very humble person, despite his enormous achievements and intellect. He was usually calm, but when pushed or forced to defend himself, he had no qualms about injuring his enemy, and hurt them enough so that he would prevent future attacks, as illustrated with his defeat of the Formics. Noble, empathetic, generous, and strong willed, he was determined to win and beat those who stood in his way.

Ender is a child in name only, and he represents the best that a human being can be, given the context. There is no part of him that desires control, and when he has it, he wishes only to avoid the abuses that he sees others commit. But Ender learns that in life we are sometimes forced to play games that we would rather not play, and that sometimes winning must be second to nothing else. Still, he manages to retain his humanity and his compassion wins out in the end, as he sets out to repay his debt to the buggers.

SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Characters Ender Valentine Peter. Themes, Motifs, Symbols.