(Begins June 7 - Ends June 14)
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Chapter 15
1) What was really going on during Free Play, and the mind game involving the Giant's Corpse? Who's game was this? Who designed it? Who was a player to it?
2) What was the relationship between Ender and the Bugger Queen? How were they alike? How would you compare/contrast this relationship to the one between Ender and his brother Peter?
3) What is the relationship between winners and losers in a game? What is the nature of the enemy?
“It sounds nice. But I couldn't stand it. I've been offered the presidency of three different universities, on the theory that I'm an educator. They don't believe me when I say that all I ever cared about at the Battle School was the game.” (Card, 306)
wow...that was good...
ReplyDelete1.)The buggers and ender all had a part in that, they found ender's mind and came to understand him.
2.) They were alike because they did not realize they were killing each other races. also they did not understand each other.
3.) The nature of the enemy can change but ultimately its someone or something you learn from. The same goes for the relationship with winners/losers you both learn something and in a sense have a form of partnership.
Ender’s Game Final Chapter Questions
ReplyDelete1. Free Play appears to be a computer guided dreamscape. As mentioned previously, Ender would encounter problems which reflected his current psychological landscape. In addition, the game’s default programming would impose upon him certain situations that were build into its programming, challenges posed to every child rather than Ender alone. The chief example is the Giant’s Drink problem, a “puzzle” which could only be solved by the player ultimately defeating the giant. The player had to make a lateral decision in that he didn’t choose either drink but rather than allow the player to negotiate with his enemy or trick his enemy into letting him go, the player is more or less forced to brutally murder the giant. This seems to re-enforce the IF’s philosophy on conflict in that the only way to ultimately defeat an enemy and permanently solve a problem is to kill the enemy, thus why they seem to engeneer Ender into that mind set, thus why they encroached and exterminated the Buggers rather than letting them alone after the second and final invasion. Because of this, the game is both Ender’s and the IF’s and neither’s. It’s made up of a conglomeration between machine, child and IF.
2. Ender and the Bugger Queen are alike in that they are not prone to violence. It is more or less clear by the end of the book that the wars between humans and buggers were the result of a miscommunication, a misunderstanding brought about by a race dependant on verbal communication coming across a race dependant on telepathic communication and each side assuming the other was hostile. The Buggers were simply acting to protect themselves. In the end, the queen regretted her decision, despairing that the humans would never forgive her. Likewise, whenever Ender has to seriously hurt or kill someone, he wished greatly that he didn’t have to do it, that his “enemy” would have just left him alone instead of forcing him to defend himself.
Ender and Peter are a bit different. Ender finds out that, when pressed, he’s able to resort to the kind of brutality that Peter is capable of, though he doesn’t seem to recognize that, most of the time, it’s out of survival instinct whereas Peter simply throws his weight around to get his way. Peter, for the first half of his life, appears to not regret his actions. It’s only at the end, near his death, that he asks forgiveness for what he’s done and then it’s unclear as to whether or not it’s out of fear for what comes after or out of genuine regret. Peter appears to be like Ender, yet more forceful and much less repentant.
3. In a game, a winner is typically the player who fulfills all of the player’s goals and the loser is the remaining player who has failed to meet all or some of the goals. Being the first to complete a goal may be a goal in and of itself, thus why we have games where both players are tied but because one player accomplishes something first, he wins. Both these terms, however, have loose meanings. Depending on how we view each term, a winner might not actually gain anything and a looser might gain more than a winner. It’s quite possible that someone is able to win a game but get nothing out of it because they were not challenged enough or were not forced to use any new skills or learn new knowledge. In this case, the winner actually didn’t win anything save a victory within the game space whereas a looser might have gathered some bit of knowledge from his defeat, allowing him to grow and mature, “winning” him experience.
ReplyDeleteThe enemy in it’s purest sense is the competition. The enemy may be considered “evil” – in this case, evil refers to someone who is self-serving at the extreme cost of others – “neutral” – self serving but not belligerent – or “good” – at least mostly selfless. In the case of a game, an enemy is simply a player on the opposing team. An enemy may be a friend, in the case of games with more than two players in which the players are able to cooperate but there can be only one winner. An enemy could change into an ally in the middle of a game, as is the case in most team-based online shooters with a team scramble mechanic. Who your friends and enemies within the game are is dependant on each player’s goal. Friendships are made by shared goals and interests (i.e. A victory in which the spoils go to both sides of a two-person cooperative group) and enemies made by conflicting interests (each side wants resources allocated to different things) or by interests that make cooperation impossible (a limited resource which is un-sharable due to its rarity.