Control, Manipulation, and Authority Theme Analysis

It’s clear from Chapter 1 of Ender’s Game that Orson Scott Card’s novel takes place at a time when the governments of the world exercise harsh control over their own citizens. There seem to be three major powers in the world: America, controlled by the powerful Strategos; Russia, controlled by the equally powerful Polemarch; and the IF, supposedly controlled by both the Polemarch and Strategos, but in actuality controlled largely by administrators like Colonel Hyrum Graff. It’s worth understanding how these forces maintain their power, and what Card is suggesting about the way authority works.

The great powers in Card’s novel maintain control of their people for highly specific reasons. Early in the book it’s explained that religious and sexual freedom in the United States has been regulated to the point where it’s illegal to have more than two children. (This clashes with the teachings of religions such as Mormonism and Catholicism.) The supposed reason for these restrictions of people’s freedom is population control—it’s implied that there’s not enough food to go around, meaning that the only way for the human race to survive is to limit human reproduction. Much the same is true of Ender’s education under the IF at Battle School. Ender’s freedom to communicate with his family or to make friends is taken away from him, always with the stated purpose of making Ender a superior soldier and defeating the Buggers, thereby saving the human race from destruction.

When presented as a problem of “freedom versus survival,” it’s hard to argue with the logic of restricting Ender’s mail or limiting the legal number of children. But Scott heavily implies that there is something more sinister going on. At one point, Dink Meeker, a friend of Ender’s, suggests a disturbing possibility: there are no more Buggers—the IF is fabricating the threat in order to maintain control of the world’s children. While Dink turns out to be wrong about the Buggers themselves (they’re still alive), he’s half-right: in a sense, the IF is creating the Bugger threat to manipulate others. This becomes clear toward the end of the novel, when Ender realizes that the Bugger queen trusts Ender, and wants to cooperate with him to ensure that both Buggers and humans can live in peace. The IF wrongly assumes that the Buggers will continue to wage war on humans, and it acts accordingly. When understood in this way, the tyranny of the IF (or, for that matter, the governments of Earth) doesn’t demonstrate mankind’s need to survive so much as mankind’s inexhaustible need to fight. Sure enough, less than 24 hours after the Buggers are defeated, war breaks out on Earth.

If there is a problem with the governments in Orson Scott Card’s novel, it’s their lack of understanding of people (or Buggers) who are unlike them. It’s not entirely clear what Orson Scott Card would put in their place, but it’s notable that his novel ends with Ender going off to found both a new world and a new religion—one that’s based on a sensitive understanding of other people. Throughout Ender’s life, he’s been controlled and manipulated by governments that push him to be violent and attack those unlike him. In his new world, Ender hopes to pioneer a new kind of authority that rejects the fear, violence, and strict control of Earth’s rulers.