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1. What is the genre?
Global — Performance > Profession
Secondary — Worldview > Maturation
2. What are the conventions and obligatory scenes for the genre?
Conventions
Strong Mentor Figure. Graff is the strong mentor figure for Ender. Although he constantly pushes Ender to the end of the line, for the sake of humanity, he also gives Ender advice, pushes Ender in ways that are unique to Ender and his mental capacity to handle challenges, and makes sure Ender has some time to regroup when he has pushed Ender too far.
Training. Ender is constantly training. In Battle School and Command School most of his focus is spent on training exercises for battling the buggers. His training and successes are responsible for driving the narrative forward, as his life gets more and more complicated the better he performs.
All is Lost Moment. Ender faces his all is lost most as the final battle of Command School is announced. In the set up to that moment, he decides he wants to fail this last test because he wants to go home, and then realizes if he does fail, all might really be lost because the buggers could destroy Earth and everyone on it or the IF could kill him. Just as he has psyched himself up to go on for the final test, the battle screen is revealed and he realizes that the odds are so stacked against him there is no way he will win. Confident that the Command School is purposely being unfair and setting him up to fail, he decides to break the rules and ignore his own losses and attacks on his fleet by the enemy and go after the planet. He realizes that he will probably fail the test and be sent home, but that he decides is a different type of victory against the IF and he is so angry that he has been cheated of the opportunity to graduate Command School by those in charge of it, that he does not care. This is a brilliant “all is lost” moment because it sets up the final payoff so well. If Ender did not get to this moment and risk everything to win, the IF would not have defeated the buggers.
Mentor recovers moral compass or betrays the Protagonist to act out perceived victimhood. Graff recovers his moral compass when he allows Ender to remain in Florida for three months so that he can emotionally recover from his fight with Bonzo (his first commander in Battle School) and his subsequent early promotion to Command School.
The power divide between the antagonist and protagonist is wide and deep. The antagonist is the IF, who run everything from the Battle School, to Command School and ultimately the army for which Ender is unknowingly fighting. The power divide is wide because the IF could make anything happen to Ender if he refuses to compete and perhaps even if he does, if his performance does not meet IF’s standards, a fact that Ender points out repeatedly and then ultimately becomes sick about when he asks whether the IF killed the other students that were “sent home.” Even when Ender tries his hardest at the games of the Battle School and Command School, the IF still have the power to make his life as miserable as they want and he can do nothing about it, for fear that he will be rejected from the program, and thus either be held responsible if the IF do not defeat the buggers, or potentially harmed by the IF for refusing to cooperate.
Ironic, win-but-lose, lose-but-win ending. Ender wins in the sense that he passes the Command School final test, and thus gives the ultimate performance, which ends up being an illusion for the final battle against the buggers whom he had unknowingly been fighting during his training in Command School. However, despite his success in the final test and ultimately in defeating the buggers, he loses the ability to choose whether to obliterate the entire species, and to put other humans in danger in the process, and thus his ability to reign in what he has always seen as the evil part of him that harms others, even though he does not want to.
Obligatory Scenes
Inciting performance opportunity: Ender’s first performance opportunity comes when he boards the ship for launch. He figures out how to orient himself so that the shift to null gravity does not make him sick, a test of his mental capacity to operate in space, and he is the only one of his launch mates to pass the test.
Protagonist sidesteps responsibility to perform: After his promotion to Command School, Ender has no interest in going on with his studies. He spends three months in Florida, swimming and thinking about the reasons behind his success, and decides he will not keep doing the bidding of the IF because it causes him to hurt others. It is only when he realizes how much he loves his sister and the rest of humanity that he agrees to be the person he does not like – one that will completely destroy his enemies, even if he feels love for them. The side stepping of responsibility comes later in this story than is typical for the hero’s journey, but it fits Ender’s gift, which is his ability to handle pressure because of the dual combination of his incredible intelligence and his ability to see situations from other’s perspective. Thus, it is fitting that he would wait until later in the story to side step responsibility as it demonstrates that he handles pressure beyond the typical child, and continues when most would have given up or sought to go home.
Forced to perform, the protagonist lashes out. Ender is forced into the commander role early, given a team that is young and untrained, and provided circumstances which he knows are meant to favor the other team, and yet he performs for them. Finally, when the odds are stacked against him by the teachers (at least, by Graff and Anderson), during a fight with his old commander, he lashes out by refusing to accept the surrender of the other team, thus humiliating Bonzo and angering the teachers. As with the side-stepping responsibility scene, the lashing out scene comes later in the story than is typical for the hero’s journey, however, it fits well with Ender’s intellectual capacity. He is supposed to be able to withstand more pressure than most, though he still has a breaking point. By placing the main lashing out scene later in the book, the reader understands that Ender has withstood more than most, but has finally reached a breaking point.
Additionally, the lashing out scene comes before the “side step responsibility scene,” which is outside the norm for the hero’s journey, but fits Ender’s unique gift of intellectual reasoning and maturity. Ender understands that he is uniquely capable when it comes to intellectual battles and takes very seriously his potential for saving humanity. Because he is able to see the big picture, it takes many challenges to push Ender to the point he decides to turn his back on the IF. However, Ender is still human and part of his humanity is his temper. Placing the lashing out before the sidestepping responsibility demonstrates that Ender is more likely to lose his temper than to avoid responsibility for the important task of saving humanity.
Protagonist discovers and understands the antagonist’s object of desire. Ender receives a letter from his sister, which the Administrator of Battle School forced her to write, and realizes that his life is completely out of his control and in the control of the IF/Battle School authority. He realizes that everything that happens to him is designed to test him or prepare him in some way for the games he is forced to play at school and that that is the antagonists object of desire – complete control over Ender’s life so they can mold him to perform as they see fit.
Protagonist’s initial strategy to outmaneuver the antagonist fails. Ender’s initial strategy to defeat the villain (the IF) is to work hard, be a strong leader and try his best to beat the other teams in the games of Battle School. Although he is reluctant and uneasy about completely giving in to the system the Battle School has in place, he buys in because he thinks it is necessary to save lives. However, his strategy of hard work just gets him thrown into situations which are even more impossible to overcome, and he realizes that just winning the games is not enough. The teachers/IF push him to the breaking point no matter how much success he demonstrates. As a result, he ends up completely depleted of a will to move forward, as he does not see a way to win freedom from their control, which sets up his all is lost moment.
Protagonist, realizing that they must change their approach to salvage some form of honor, reaches an ‘all is lost moment’. Ender’s external all is lost moment is described above, in the convention section, paragraph (a)(iii). Ender reaches his external “all is lost” moment when he realizes he cannot pass Command School because the IF has set him up to fail, and he decides to ignore their rules and win at all cost. This is a change to his prior approach because he decides to once and for all display his disdain for their corruption, even with the ultimate stakes of passing Command School and having the opportunity to save humanity on the line. Although he has acted out before, he has never done so to an extent that he is sure to be expelled. In this scene he realizes that to save his honor he must defeat those who designed the Battle Screen to embarrass him, even if it means he will be sent home for cheating.
Ender also has an internal “all is lost moment” that fits the maturation sub-plot, when he realizes that he must embrace that part of him that destroys his enemy, rather than run away from it, in order to save his sister and humankind. He realizes that he must fully understand the buggers and then, regardless of how much he admires or grows to love them based on that understanding, he must use that knowledge to destroy them. This is a change from his approach at Battle School where, although he tries to learn about his opposition to win battles (both in the games and personal battles), he tries to reject the part of himself that uses that knowledge to totally destroy his enemies when they attack. Although he never grows comfortable with expressing his gift, even when he finally succeeds in the end, this is the moment he realizes that the best bad choice is to use his gift if he wants his sister to survive rather than the buggers.
The Big Event Scene, the central event of the Performance story, when the Protagonist’s gift is expressed. Ender’s gift is expressed in what is supposed to be the final battle and test of Command School. In that battle, he decides to break the rules. Having learned from the enemy and able to anticipate its actions, Ender understands that the odds are totally stacked against him and that he will not win if he plays by the normal parameters of the game, which include preserving life and avoiding the risk of losing ships. Thinking only of beating the Command School leaders in charge of his training, he takes a risky approach designed to out maneuver his enemy by using his knowledge of how his enemy fought in previous battles, and doing so, completely destroys them.
Protagonist is rewarded at one or more levels of satisfaction (external, internal, or interpersonal). Ender is rewarded on several levels. With respect to his external object of desire, Ender is rewarded in that his sister is safe, which is the only reason he continued in Command School in the first place. With respect to his internal object of desire, Ender is rewarded in the form of freedom from the IF and from Peter, the two forces in his life who brought out the violent side of Ender that he wanted to suffocate. Although he cannot go back to Earth, he is free to set up his own life on another planet and uses that opportunity to learn about the buggers. He believes that the best way he can repay them for stealing their future is to learn from their past. Having chosen that path, he is ultimately rewarded with an understanding of who they are and what they wanted. Free from the demands of the IF and from the ever-looming presence of Peter in his personality, he is able to pursue his goal of expressing his love for the buggers by helping them.
3. What is the point of view?
Free indirect style with the points of view of Ender (the protagonist), Graff (school administrator), Val (sister of protagonist) and Ben (classmate and soldier in the army lead by Ender in Battle School and Command School).
4. What are the objects of desire?
External/Conscious: To do well in his training, not to please the teachers or IF, but so that he may be able to save Valentine from the buggers.
Internal/Subconscious: To avoid causing harm to others (and thus to avoid being cruel like his brother, Peter).
5. What is the controlling idea / theme?
To obtain honor, we must use our gifts to protect the ones we love, even if it means going against our true values in order to defeat their enemies.
6. What is the beginning hook, middle build and ending payoff?
Beginning Hook
When Ender decides go to Battle school, he is intentionally set up by the administrator of the school to be hated by his classmates and must decide whether to risk attempting a friendship to bridge the divide created by his rift with the bully in his group, or to continue humiliating the bully for tormenting him, and when he decides to befriend an enemy, thus successfully navigating the challenge the administrator/school put him into, he is thrown into an even worse situation when he is promoted early to a student army group.
Middle Build
When Ender’s commander orders him to take no part in the games, Ender jumps on an opportunity to win one for his army by disobeying that order and is hated by his commander and other students because it put him on the leader board, he must decide whether to continue succeeding, which places him in a dangerous situation because of the hate it engenders, or to refuse to play the games the teachers set against him, and when his decision to continue leads to more success and some students’ decision to kill Ender, he must decide whether to fight back and hurt others or allow the students to kill him, he decides not to die, but also to refuse to go to Command School when promoted, choosing to live peacefully isolated from everyone.
Ending Payoff
When Ender gets a visit from his sister, he decides to continue his training in command school, and is again pushed to the limits by those in charge who set him up to fail the final test of Battle School to which he responds by deciding to ignore the rules of the game in order to win, only realizing after that the games in command school were not games at all, but the final battles against the buggers whom he has now defeated, and he must come to grips with the fact that he succeeded in their defeat, even though it forced him to harm others against his wishes.
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