Ender's Game - The End?

        At the end of Ender’s Game, there is no real resolution.  Ender is finally freed from the military’s control, but is sent into an isolated location on another planet.  It isn’t the end of the series, but in this book, they never really come of age, because even when they’re six years old, as Ender was at the beginning of the book, they spoke and thought like adults.  So technically, they were “of age” throughout the entire book.  Several times, one of the characters will say something like, “We’re just kids.”  And then they realize that in this universe, that means nothing. 

            Ender, in the end, is given the responsibility of finding a place for the buggers to repopulate.  Which seems a bit strange, because he was the one who destroyed their planet.  I suppose that is a resolution, in a way, because he stops only destroying and learns to do good in the world.  However, instead of gaining responsibility, in the end it’s more like he loses it.  The military finally relieves him of command, and though famous and looked up to, he is finally able to live a normal life—or as normal as it can be under his circumstances.  In a way, Ender’s story is the opposite of the general format for coming of age.  He was never immature, and he only got more and more pressure as he grew.  In the end, even though he’s only twenty or so, I found it hard to think of him as a young man, because of all the things he’s lived through.  I thought of them all as young adults, or at least in their late teens. 

            None of the characters truly know what it’s like to be a child.  Perhaps that’s what the commanders were aiming for—to make them into the perfect soldiers.  They would be able to understand feelings, but not be hampered by them.  This doesn’t make them mature, though, only turns them into highly trained robots.  And steals the rest of their lives from them, if they make it through the war.  They’re haunted by images of the childhood they should have had, and by regret.  Regret that they ever signed up for something so dangerous.  As a child, we’re all so eager to grow up.  I think Ender’s Game is a perfect example of what it’s like when you realize that going off into the real world isn’t as fun as it seems.  War isn’t the glory of battle they talk about in medieval literature—and Ender realizes this.  There’s death.  They’re real people who are affected by this.  Ender, after killing all the buggers, is struck by the full impact of what he’s done.  He doesn’t know what to feel—relief that it’s over, that he doesn’t need to be in command anymore, happiness that the war is finally over, or remorse for all the lives he’s taken.

            In the end, Ender finds some sort of peace.  He is able to start a new life on another planet, a planet “so far away that if you were ever to go back to Earth, everyone you knew would be dead.”  I think this was for the best.  He never needs to face all the negative influences of his parents and brother again, never see all his old antagonists, and finally have as little responsibility as possible.  It must have been strange for him, to have no more sense of direction, no more urgency, no more goal to accomplish.  And at first, I think he was a little lost, never really having known a peaceful life.  In the end, however, I think he was much happier, or as close to content as he could get.