Ender’s unprecedented success arouses his fellow commanders’ jealousy, who subject him to steadily worse torment based on Andrew Wiggin’s personality using two contrasting personality theories. The lead bully, Bonzo, confronts Ender in the shower and attempts to kill Ender, but fails. Ender, driven to defend himself because of the administration’s lack of intervention, kills Bonzo to end the conflict but does not know it. This reinforces Ender’s recurring role as the ender of conflict, a personality trait favored by the administration. After the fight, they let Ender graduate from Battle School, never informing him that Bonzo died from his injuries.
After graduating several years ahead of schedule, he is transferred to Command School on Eros. There he trains in interstellar fleet combat with holographic simulators. After Ender masters the game under ordinary conditions, the game changes from one with direct control of ships to one where he relays commands to his friends and associates from Battle School: Julian “Bean” Delphiki, Alai, Shen, Petra Arkanian, Dink Meeker, Crazy Tom, Hot Soup, Fly Molo, Vlad, Dumper, and Carn Carby. Under the tutelage of Mazer Rackham, the legendary savior of humanity from the previous war, Ender and his trusted companions take on a grueling series of battles and emerge victorious each time, although the mounting pressure pushes Ender to the edge.
The final battle takes place above a planet made by the simulator at command school. The fight is against an enemy with overwhelming numerical superiority. Ender perceives this as a grossly unfair test and resolves to win by breaking the rules. This, he thinks, would convince his instructors that he is not the man to lead the Fleet into battle with the Formics. Instead of fighting the enemy ship-to-ship, Ender penetrates their defensive perimeter and destroys the planet itself. Not until after the pandemonium that follows is he told that it was not a simulation: Instead of taking on Rackham in what they had thought was a long series of simulations, he and his classmates had been unknowingly issuing orders to real ships in real combat. The final battle consisted of the destruction of the Bugger homeworld and the apparent eradication of the Bugger species. Ender is hailed as a hero, but he is stricken with guilt for having unknowingly committed genocide.
Valentine informs him that in the wake of the war, he would never be allowed to return to Earth due to her actions to protect him from Peter, who was becoming a major political force on Earth. He journeys with her to one of the colonies being established on the now-abandoned Bugger worlds. Once there, he discovers a fertilized pupa of a Queen Bugger, hidden in a place that the Buggers designed for him to discover by modeling it to resemble part of an interactive computer game he played during his years in the Battle School. The buggers find out about it during his tormented dreams of them in Command School. The pupal Queen is capable of continuing the Bugger race. Applying two contrasting personality theories, through rudimentary telepathic communication with the Queen, he learned what he had begun to suspect before the war’s end: The entire conflict had been a mistake, resulting from the inability of two alien species to communicate. He also learns from the Queen that the Buggers had regretted having mistakenly fought humans and forgiven Ender for destroying their world. Empathizing with the Queen, Ender promises to find her a home to grow where the humans would not annihilate the Buggers.
To foster this eventual rebirth, Ender writes a book called The Hive Queen, which tells the story of the war from the Formic perspective. Ender uses the pseudonym Speaker for the Dead to author it. When Peter, who has advanced to the position of Hegemon of Earth, contacts him, the Speaker for the Dead, he writes a second novel, The Hegemon, a human parallel to the first book. The two are combined by popular culture, eventually becoming one of the founding texts of a quasi-religious practice on Earth’s colonies. After writing the book, Ender and Valentine depart in a ship in an attempt to find a planet that would allow the Queen to grow and call their new home.
Final paper should be between 15 and 20 pages, not including the cover page, abstract, and references. Final paper must follow APA style format (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association). Attached is a sample outline to follow for a good paper.
Note from student: There are quite a few personality theories discussed in this course, the main text book is Friedman, H. S., & Schustack, M. W. (2016). Personality: Classic theories and modern research (6th ed.) Pearson.
Suggestion: The two contrasting personality theories can be between Psych-Analytical Aspects of Personality such as Freud (Psycho-sexual Analysis) and Neo-Analytical and Ego Aspects of Personality ( such as Carl. G. Jung/Alfred Adler/Karen Horney etc.).
Extra resources to consider, if interested:
https://link.springer.com/
https://journals.library.
http://eprints.ums.ac.id/
Kessel, J. (2004). Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality. FOUNDATION-DAGENHAM-, 90, 81
