Formics

Abstract: The school story has a long tradition in children's literature. Orson Scott Card dramatically revises and rewrites the tradition in two "school stories in space," Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. Doyle and Stewart find that Card's innovations in the school story form and his departures from conventional narrative structures are inextricably linked to the need to escape narrowly defined perceptions about narrative, about education, and about the relationships between adults and children. Ultimately and essentially, the novels reconsider what it means to be human, with its attending successes and failures, in a postmodern world.

Abstract: Orson Scott Card’s “school stories in outer space,” Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, purportedly occur at the same time and tell the “same” story, but from the perspectives of two different child protagonists. Scenes in Ender’s Shadow even reproduce text from Ender’s Game. Nevertheless, 14 years elapsed between the publications of the two books. This essay brings child studies and exceptionality research to bear on the two novels, analyzing the development of Card’s ideology regarding his view of the exceptional child and his view of the nature of heroism in a post-modern world.

Abstract: Orson Scott Card's novel Ender's Game follows Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin's journey to become the next hero of mankind that will defeat the seemingly imminent Formics' Third Invasion, an enemy alien species. This dissertation aims at arguing that despite the claims that Ender is a victim in the hands of the officers who run the training programme, he also bears certain responsibility for the acts he commits during his stay in it. This would enable us to place Ender, not under one of the mutually exclusive categories - victim or culprit -, but as being both at the same time.