Ender's Game (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

Earth

Each chapter of Ender's Game opens with a conversation between the government officials who are responsible for finding a military genius to lead Earth to victory against the alien "bugger" fleet. From these conversations, the reader learns that Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is considered humanity's best hope for such a leader. It is also made clear that these officials will isolate and test Ender as much as possible to mold him into the effective military leader they so desperately need.

Ender's story opens as he is finally losing the monitor implanted in the base of his neck, a device which allows government officials to see and hear whatever he experiences. He is later than most in having the device removed — six years old — thus separating him from his peers. He is also the third child of his family, in a futuristic society that seldom allows more than two children. Although Ender is a legal 'Third," he is still an object of scorn and derision. After the monitor is removed, an older, bigger boy, Stilson, leads a group of bullies against Ender. Ender fights him viciously, attempting to discourage further attacks in the future. (The fact that Stilson dies in the process is not revealed until the book's later chapters.)

At home, Ender's older sister Valentine sympathizes with him, but his sadistic brother Peter brutalizes him and says that someday he will kill Ender and Valentine. The following day, Colonial Hyrum Graff of the International Fleet comes to the house and convinces Ender to accompany him to Battle School. There he will train to fight the Buggers, a race of insect-like aliens that has invaded Earth twice already and nearly destroyed humankind. Ender agrees to go, due to a combination of three things: love for his sister; fear of his brother; and the knowledge that his conception as a Third was only allowed because it might produce a qualified candidate for the school. In the space-ship that takes new cadets to the orbiting Battle School, Graff shows preferential treatment to Ender. An older boy bullies Ender because of this, and Ender responds too hard for the weightlessness of space, breaking the other boy's arm. Even before entering the school, Ender has once again been set apart from the other children.

Battle School

From the first, Ender is the object of bullying at Battle School, in part because the school's leaders intend for him to be isolated and feared. He wins some respect by devising clever new strategies in battle simulation games and for cracking the security codes on his tormentors' computer files. He and his fellow beginners, called "Launchies," are finally introduced to the null-gravity battleroom, where the older recruits learn strategy by conducting battles against each other's armies. Just as Ender begins making friends, he is promoted from the Launchies into a student army, the Salamanders. Not quite seven, he is at least a year early for the promotion. He becomes an outcast once again; his commander, Bonzo Madrid, forbids him to participate in battles and vows to trade him away at the earliest opportunity.

A fellow soldier in his army, Petra Arkanian, helps Ender learn some of the basics of fighting in the battleroom. Forbidden to work with the Salamander Army, Ender begins practicing with his old Launchy comrades. Ender later wins a crucial battle by disregarding Bonzo's orders. From then on, Ender's imaginative strategies draw attention to him as he is transferred from one army to another, absorbing effective and ineffective military techniques by observing his commanders. Some of the older children resent him, however, and try to break up his Launchy session. He is once again forced into violence to protect himself. The frustration he feels spills over into the fantasy computer game he plays, and Ender fears he is becoming a cold-blooded killer like his brother Peter.

When Ender is given command of his own army it is not, as usual, manned with soldiers from other armies, but is filled with new recruits; they are inexperienced but intelligent and inventive, and not held down by outdated strategies. The maneuvers Ender devises are imaginative and complex, and his Dragon Army maintains a perfect record. The Battle School rules change to keep pressure on Ender's army: instead of getting three months to prepare for their first battle, they are given a few weeks; instead of fighting every second week they face other armies daily; finally, they have to face two opposing armies at once. Ender resents the way the game changes to challenge him, but he adapts new strategies and wins. The other commanders resent his success, and a group of boys, led by Bonzo Madrid, confront Ender in the shower. Ender defends himself, and, as with Stilson on Earth, he is not told that he has left the other boy dead.

Earth

While Ender has been growing up at Battle School, his twelve-year-old brother Peter has been concocting a plot to gain political power. Peter has noticed that, despite international cooperation in the war against the aliens, the Russians seem to be maneuvering troops for a war. He and ten-year-old Valentine devise fictitious personalities, Locke and Demosthenes, to publish political essays on the internet. Valentine's character, Demosthenes, is more radical and favors war, which is the opposite of what she really believes. Locke, on the other hand, is tolerant in a way Peter is not. Their essays are so persuasive that soon major news organizations are carrying columns by them both. Their views are cited in political speeches, their thoughts are affecting policy decisions, and no one suspects that the writers are children.

Ender, his spirit broken by the increasingly meaningless battle games and by his own surprising cruelty in the fight with Bonzo Madrid, graduates from Battle School. He returns to Earth and is allowed to rest for a few months, but he refuses to co-operate with the military any more. Colonial Graff brings Valentine, now twelve, to see him at the lake cabin where he is kept. They have a discussion while Ender agonizes over all that is being asked of him. Out of concern for all manlind, especially his sister, and for the natural beauty of planet Earth, he agrees to continue with his training.

Eros

Ender is taken to the International Fleet's command post on Eros, where top secret plans are explained to him. He is told of the First and Second Invasions. In the First Invasion the enemy was defeated because they were surprised to find humans capable of intelligence. The hero of the Second Invasion, Mazer Rackham, teaches Ender that he won the war because of a lucky hunch. Guessing that the Buggers would behave like insects, he destroyed the invasion's central ship, killing the queen and thereby shutting down the mental abilities of their entire fleet. Currently, Ender is told, the Earth is invading the Buggers' home planet, with ships that left five years earlier. They will be within attacking distance very soon, which is why Ender's training has been at such an accelerated pace.

For over a year, Ender studies alone, tutored by individuals and tested by more realistic computer simulations. He trains with Mazer Rackham, and learns more about his Bugger opponents. Eventually, he is reunited with his closest and most respected colleagues from the Battle School. Together they compete against what seems to be a series of computer simulations. While Ender's forces always win, his dreams are tormented by visions of the buggers. He stumbles through his training until he is posed with a "final exam." After winning this last, particularly difficult battle, Ender is told that he has not been playing against the computer for months. Instead, he has been leading the invading fleet, and he has just destroyed the Buggers' home planet, wiping their race into extinction. He is eleven.

The Colony

After the war, Ender stays on Eros, but he receives word of wars on Earth, where he is known worldwide as the hero who saved the human race. Ender is promoted to admiral, and so the truth cannot be kept from him any more. He watches Colonel Graff on trial for war crimes and child abuse, and sees broadcast footage of himself killing Stilson and Bonzo. He learns about a worldwide peace treaty engineered by Locke, whom he knows is his brother Peter. He knows he can never return home, as Peter will attempt to make him a political pawn. He is also uncomfortable with the admiration he is receiving for having murdered an entire sentient race.

Valentine comes to him, however, and suggests that he join her as part of the first colonial expedition to occupy one of the Buggers' planets. At the new colony, Valentine becomes an historian and Ender becomes the colony's governor. Years pass, until Ender comes across a familiar structure while looking for land for a new colony: it is an abandoned city, built inside the decayed skeleton of a giant. It is an exact duplicate of a scene that haunted him from the video game he played in Battle School. He realizes that the Buggers were able to monitor his game, that they knew he would come to destroy them, and so they built this imitation as a sign to him.

At a symbolic place in the city he finds a Bugger queen egg, and it communicates with him telepathically. He takes the egg with him, promising to let it hatch when he can find some place safe for it. To atone for his crime, he writes a book telling the Hive Queen's story, signing it "Speaker for the Dead." After Ender's brother Peter dies, having ruled Earth as the Hegemon, Ender writes a similar book, again signing it anonymously. A religion forms around the writings, even though nobody knows who wrote them. Speakers for the Dead arise to interpret the lives, in all their goodness and cruelty, of people who have passed. Seeking a new home for the Queen, Ender takes Valentine, now a historian, into space. There they travel the galaxy, learning and interpreting the stories of the living and the dead.