Book 2 Entry #5

Q. What is the mood of this novel? Do you find this novel saddens you in any way? why?

The whole novel’s mood, as a matter of fact, is quite depressing. We all have these scenes and numerous pages where Ender goes under suffering from his launchmates, fellow soldiers, upper commanders, and even his brother, Peter. Then, in the last climax, Ender gains victory. However, this part is too short to change the mood of this story. Though it has a strong emotion, ten pages can’t beat the rest of the book. Moreover, I think this book is more depressing because there is no nature in the book. Throughout the whole novel, Ender stays in the Battle School, and because it is located in space, no sense of nature comes out. The author almost never seems to mention about nature such as sunlight, forests, flowers, fresh air, rain, or snow. It is just life in the cubed rooms, full with tension.

Frankly, this novel saddens me because of how other characters treat Ender. This is similar to real life in Korea. I think the people in this novel treat geniuses in a wrong way. At least, I can’t blame Graff for giving Ender such a hard time because he actually became the war hero, but I think Graff’s method was wrong. I think a real way to grow geniuses is using the carrot-and-whip method. The people who train the genius shouldn’t just give loads of work and hardships, but also fruits and show accomplishments of the genius so that they can understand that they are developing. This worked because this was fiction. I am quite sure that if this was real life, Ender would have had a very, very high chance of giving up in the middle of the Battle School. Furthermore, geniuses are also people and they need rest. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, no nature comes out in this novel. I think we could change the mood of this novel by portraying the scene where Ender comes back to Earth, feels the warm sunshine and enjoys the scent of flowers.