Ender’s Game: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

By this point in the book, the short conversations about Ender that begin each chapter are a matter of course. Here Graff is preparing a challenging new syllabus for Ender. It’s as if Card is eager to get the point, and wants to waste as little time as possible.

As before, Ender is almost entirely cut off from his peers—and at Eros, he basically has no peers. He eats and lives alone, except for Graff—a man he mostly despises. It’s telling that Ender chooses to devote his free time (the time that, theoretically, could be used for relaxing or sleeping) to studying more military history. As we saw in his last visit to Earth, Ender has been training with the Battle School for so long that he can’t imagine any other kind of life. He recognizes that he is being honed as a perfect weapon, and so he gives up on any aspect of life that distracts from this purpose.

In this strange section, Mazer teaches by example. As aggressive as Ender can be, he’s thus far always resorted to fighting defensively. He didn’t go out and try to hurt Bonzo—he had to wait for Bonzo to fight him. This scene is a memorable way of reminding us (and Ender) that the old, defensive strategies aren’t part of the IF’s current plan. Ender has to seize every advantage he has, even if it means hurting people who haven’t hurt him yet. In essence, he’s being taught to “shoot first and ask questions later.” The revelation of Mazer is also a surprise, as he has so far been a mysterious and legendary figure, and someone presumably long dead.

Here Card shows that relativity plays an important role in the technology of his “Ender universe.” It’s theoretically possible for people to live long lives, provided that they travel at near-light speed, as time flows slower for objects moving quickly. It’s clear that Mazer, like Ender, is seen as a powerful weapon—something to be preserved and used for as long as possible.

Here Mazer gives Ender the final piece of the puzzle of the Buggers. The Buggers don’t really understand the concept of the individual (although as we’ll see later, they understand it in some limited ways, like caring for children). Instead, the Buggers are controlled by a single, powerful queen. The implications of this—which Ender seems unwilling to consider for now—are staggering. Perhaps the queen didn’t realize that she was “killing” humans, as the concept of taking an individual life just isn’t relevant to the queen’s existence. Ender, so indoctrinated in Battle School teachings, doesn’t seem to realize all this right now.

Mazer implies that if Ender gets a chance to use the Dr. Device to destroy the queen, he should do so, since this will essentially end the war in one fell swoop. Ender seems to avoid considering the fact that he’d be murdering an entire species, and also that the “war” might well be one-sided now. He’s been trained in military ways for so long that he can’t see the forest for the trees.

Whereas before Ender was being cut off from his friends, here he’s united with some of his oldest comrades, including Bean, Shen, and Alai—but as subordinates, not friends. This is exactly the kind of relationship Graff was trying to foster—these soldiers like and respect Ender, but don’t see him as a peer. Ender tries to imitate the Bugger queen’s strategy by making sure that his orders pass smoothly from his mouth to the simulation ships that his commanders control. Once again, we see Ender “loving” his enemy, learning from her, and using that knowledge to wage war.

Ender’s relationship with Mazer reiterates the proximity of love and hate: although the two seem to be rivals, and talk about being each other’s enemies, there is also clearly a deep mutual respect in their relationship. Mazer isn’t given as much character development as someone like Graff—this final part of the novel is mostly devoted to Ender’s almost hallucinatory state of constant warfare.

The first time Ender uses the Dr. Device, it’s devastating—clearly his computer-simulated opponent isn’t ready for it. It’s unclear at what point the “simulations” become real, but at some point (as we learn later) Ender is fighting real Bugger ships, and is simply kept ignorant of the real destruction he is inflicting. It is only because he thinks that he is still playing games that Ender is able to remain sane.

Ender must now purge himself of his last protective instincts—he has to master the military concept of “acceptable losses.” It’s interesting that Ender has managed to make it this far without learning to sacrifice his own people. His loyalty to his followers (and also, perhaps, his confidence) is so strong that it’s always hard for him to make such sacrifices.

Although Ender is improving as a commander, he still struggles with the same problems he’s always faced. He has nightmares in which it becomes clear that he hasn’t forgiven himself for his fights with Bonzo and Stilson. Worst of all, Ender comes to realize that he’s been trained to be an indiscriminate killer: he could even kill Valentine, if given the order. He’s terrified that the IF is turning him into a monster—but his ability to still cry and feel such pain proves that his humanity hasn’t been totally crushed.

In this section, Card reminds us that Ender is always the hardest worker in his own armies. He doesn’t cut corners and expect his troops to pick up the slack—instead, he bears whatever burdens his soldiers are incapable of bearing by themselves. The result of this is that Ender begins to suffer in every way: physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Miraculously, he continues to play well, winning game after game. Eventually, though, the pressure becomes too much for him, and he cracks. But this is only a temporary setback—Mazer (now far more ruthless than Graff) pushes Ender to fight harder, even when he’s in no physical condition to fight. At this point we no longer sense Graff’s manipulations behind Ender’s life—something larger is at work.

In this strange section—half-dreamed, half-real—Ender thinks that he hears Graff defending him before Mazer. This is highly unlikely, since, as we’ve seen, Graff is always the one who insists that Ender be pushed harder and harder. We can sense that Ender’s performances in the battle simulations are uniformly excellent, however—this part of the dream is not imagined.

For one of the last times in the book, Card deviates from Ender’s perspective to inform us that today is Ender’s last day. He fights a battle for which it seems he’s meant to make a difficult decision: blow up the simulation planet, or fight around the planet, sparing Bugger “civilians.” Mazer gives Ender good reasons not to attack the Bugger planet—for example, Buggers have never attacked human civilians. And yet we’re also meant to remember Ender’s first encounter with Mazer, in which Mazer told Ender to attack preemptively—and also Ender’s past fights with bullies, in which he used excessive force to prevent future conflicts. Ultimately, this is basically placing a vast moral decision on the shoulders of a child—but enabling him to bear this burden by also convincing him that it’s all “just a game.”

In this climactic scene, Ender realizes that his only chance is to do what he’s always excelled at—bending the rules to his advantage—as represented by Bean’s reminder that “the enemy’s gate is down). The rules of battle state that a good commander tries to save his troops’ lives while killing as many foes as possible. But here, Ender decides to send his troops to end the battle more simply—by blowing up the enemy’s planet. Ender thinks that in doing this he’s defying the rules of the Command School program, and disobeying Mazer Rackham’s example.

In only a few moments, Ender has won the battle—in his mind, by “cheating.” He’s killed many of his own troops, but he’s technically won by defeating his opponent. One thinks back to Ender’s experience in the battleroom, when he technically won an unwinnable battle by twisting the rules of the game. Here, he’s done the same thing on a larger scale. He doesn’t yet have an idea of just how large a scale, however.

In this shocking scene, we learn the truth (if we hadn’t already guessed it): the “game” has been real ever since Ender arrived at Eros—whenever he sent simulated pilots into war, he was commanding an actual battle. The horrific genius of this deception on the IF’s part is that Ender treats war like a game—something with rules, to be followed or selectively broken—rather than treating it as a grim reality. Anyone who knew that the game was real would have been more cautious with sacrificing his own troops, or with attacking enemy civilians—only a child, fooled into believing that it was only a game, could have mustered the enthusiasm and creativity to think of a “solution” to the game, especially one such massive amounts of casualties.

Here Graff finally shows his hand—a hand he’s been hiding from Ender for years. Graff knew long ago that the only way to ensure, to a certainty, the survival of the human race, was to murder every single Bugger. But this was an act of genocide—surely inconceivable for any decent human being. The only way to win the war was to train soldiers who wouldn’t understand what they were doing when they killed the Buggers: children who were so used to playing games that they wouldn’t have any problem believing that their battles with the Buggers were only computer simulations. While it’s important that Graff and Mazer accept responsibility for the Bugger extermination, we should note that really they’re sharing the blame with Ender. Neither Ender nor Graff is entirely guilty or innocent of the crime: Graff did the planning but not the execution, while Ender had no idea of the plan, but was responsible for the execution. The hero’s nickname also becomes darkly prophetic here—he is the “ender” of the Bugger species.

In this pessimistic scene, Card reminds us who Ender has been fighting for: flawed, violent human beings. It doesn’t take 24 hours after Ender’s victory before the people of Earth start fighting again. This suggests that the uneasy peace on Earth was only the result of a shared extraterrestrial enemy—now that this enemy is gone, the humans turn on each other. Ender seems to be entering a stage of trauma, and he can barely focus. The reality that he has murdered billions of Buggers is finally hitting him.

Ender is hardly free from his old demons—on the contrary, they seem stronger and more dangerous than ever before. Because this has all been a “game” to him, the war is still mostly playing out on a psychological level for Ender.

Ina cruel twist of fate, Ender’s plunge into guilt—he knows that he’s a killer—coincides almost exactly with Peter’s rise to world prominence as an agent of peace and enlightenment. Ender has always been afraid that he’s “just like Peter,” but the final irony seems to be that he’s actually much worse than Peter—at least in the results of his actions, if not in his intentions.

After all the trauma and violence they’ve been through, Card allows his characters one small moment of happiness together before they go their separate ways. As always, the “joke” is that Ender and his friends aren’t children, even if they’re young: they have always had adult minds, and adult responsibilities.