Ender's Game Analysis

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Human Rights Issues- Genocide and Forcing Children Have you ever been forced into doing something you don’t really want to do? Maybe your parents “force” you to do your homework or clean your room, but what if it was something damaging? What if you were forced to kill of an entire race or species? Ender Wiggin had to do just that at only eleven years of age. Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game demonstrates forcing children to go into wars and genocide, which have been issues in many other countries. Card presents genocide and forcing children to fight in wars through the character Ender; an eleven-year-old boy who is imposed into fighting and wiping out the whole bugger species. Card writes, “‘… You won every battle, and today you finally fought them at their home world, where the queen was, all the queens from all their colonies, they all were there and you destroyed them completely…’”(297). In this conversation, Ender realizes that it wasn’t a game, and all of the attacks he enforced were real. He actually committed genocide, something he clearly did not want to do. Another example is, “ ‘Of course we tricked you into it. That’s the whole point,’ said Graff. ‘It had to be a trick or you couldn’t have done it… But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn’t do it…’”(Card 298). With this detail, it shows that this was not Ender’s choice and that he did not want to harm anyone. Graff tricked Ender into doing this because deep down everyone knew that Ender could not really do it. However, a child had to lead the battle. “ ‘And it had to be a child, Ender,’ said Mazer. ‘You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn’t know. We mad
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