I was rereading Ender’s Game the other day, and I came across a quote that made me put the book down for a second.
“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them . . . I destroy them.”
Orson Scott Card
For those familiar with Orson Scott Card’s science fiction classic, this quote is from the chapter “Valentine,” when Ender recuperates at the lake after graduating Battle School. And for those who haven’t read it–go read it. It won the Hugo and Nebula awards for a reason.
While Ender’s Game is an easy read, it raises complex questions about prioritizing the whole over the individual, the efficacy of compassion versus force in conflict, the essence of good leadership, and what I find most interesting, how to love your enemy while still protecting yourself and others from harm.
As usual, I’m going to rely on the Bible to help me answer this question, with some insightful comments from C.S. Lewis and maybe some words of wisdom from Abraham Lincoln if I get around to it. First, though, let’s look at how Ender copes with destroying his enemies at the expense of his conscience.
Soul of a Jackal
Ender Wiggin is a genius. Not only that, but he is also six years old with two older siblings who are just as smart as he is. Equal intelligence but different temperaments. Peter “has the soul of a jackal,” by which I mean, he’s selfish and power-hungry to the point of psychopathy. Valentine, on the other hand, is empathetic to a fault. And Ender, well, Ender is supposed to the porridge that is just right.
The relationship Ender has with each of his siblings forms the book’s emotional core. What I find so fascinating is that by the end of chapter three, Ender leaves his family to go to Battle School. He never sees Peter again and speaks to Valentine only in certain moments before the climax and during the resolution. But what makes their presence felt throughout the book is Ender’s aversion or attraction to the parts of himself that align with Peter and Valentine’s respective behaviors.
In the first chapter, Ender beats up Silson, the school bully, for calling him a Third, a real insult in a country that has mandated a two-child limit for families, with exceptions for exceptional gene pools. Ender constantly has to endure people’s jealousy and resentment on account of his smarts, constantly assessing the threat and acting accordingly. But when he beats Stilson senseless, the guilt comes rushing in. Ender believes he is “just like Peter.” This belief reinforces itself whenever Ender resorts to violence to defend himself. He wishes people could “play fair.” That way he wouldn’t have to hurt them.
Whether he’s being cornered in the bathroom by older boys drunk on revenge, or battling two armies at once, Ender is continually being forced to exert his unmatched strategic abilities on less skilled opponents while simultaneously hating the system for stacking the odds against him to draw out the part of him that wins so thoroughly that he inflicts unintentional harm on his opponents.
This dilemma plays itself out internally and externally.
Snake Symbolisms
There’s a scene in the Locke and Demosthenes chapter, right after Ender receives Valentine’s encouragement letter, when Ender returns to the End of the World stage in the mind game simulation. As usual, he encounters the serpent which crawls out of the tower room rug. The last time Ender came to this point in the game, he crushed the snake beneath his foot (possibly a biblical reference comparing Ender to Jesus) and then saw to his horror that the mirror in the tower room showed him Peter’s face. The mirror shattered and out came still more snakes. They attacked Ender (presumably still taking the form of Peter), eventually killing him and ending the simulation.
During Ender’s next encounter, encouraged by Valentine’s assurance that he is not the instinctual killer that Peter is, Ender lifts the serpent to his mouth and kisses it. The serpent then transforms into his sister, Valentine.
While it’s unclear what the serpent is supposed to symbolize, I think it’s fair to say that it is a visual representation of Valentine’s undying love and compassion. In the first instance, when Ender sees himself as Peter in the mirror, there is the tail of a snake in the corner of Peter’s mouth, as if he’s been eating them. Peter’s predatory, self-serving behavior preys on Valentine’s open heart as demonstrated when he manipulates her into becoming his mouthpiece on the nets as Demosthenes. The only way for Ender to break the mirror is to throw snakes at it. So, can love and compassion be used as a righteous weapon to shatter the predators’ advances? That doesn’t work for Valentine, but then again, she really only loved Ender.
So why use a serpent of all things as a symbol of love and compassion? All of my analysis is speculation, but if we look at these mind game simulations as reflections of the Wiggins’ varying temperaments, then we can draw some conclusions. Compassion, or more to the point, empathy, can be hijacked by sinful intentions, as can any human emotion we view as virtuous.
Valentine is understanding to the point where she “could always see what people liked best about themselves and flatter them.” She hates to admit it to herself, but that kind of power excites her. That excitement is what Peter exploits to essentially manipulate her into spouting off his propaganda on the nets. She may love Ender unconditionally, but she does not destroy the evil that whispers in her ear. Like Satan in the Garden of Eden, she knows when people are hurting, what they long to be true about themselves and the world, and by affirming these feelings, turns them against the truth.
So, while compassion can be used to quench the fires of hatred like when Ender throws the snake at the mirror, it can also be used to wrongly affirm, flatter, and indulge, like when Ender kisses the snake, and it turns into Valentine. The two embrace, as Ender takes comfort in knowing he is nothing at all like Peter as Valentine told him in the letter.
Except Ender is something like Peter. If he were as docile as Valentine, he wouldn’t have been accepted into Battle School. If he had been completely averse to hurting others, he would not have survived. This brings us to the external conflict. Ender versus the buggers.
The Perfect Weapon
The buggers represent an existential threat. The IF (International Fleet) has thwarted two invasion attempts and is counting on Ender to lead an offensive that will destroy the buggers once and for all. They need a commander empathic enough to bond with his officers and think like the enemy, yet ruthless enough to wipe out an entire species. But this presents something of a problem for Ender. In school, he won every battle he fought because he came to internalize his opponent’s strategies, to know their strengths and weaknesses. In short, to see them as they saw themselves. Only then was he capable of destroying them. Go back to the opening quote: ” I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”
The IF, however, understood Ender. If Ender was faced with destroying the buggers’ queens, the brains of the species, the only ones with true personality and feeling, then he wouldn’t have been able to kill them. So, the IF played the ultimate mind game. They acted as though the real-life battles were simulations and made Ender play until he had destroyed the bugger planets. In the end, the IF knew Ender’s compassion would trump his killer instinct, so they manipulated the genius to save the world.
Then, is it a binary choice? Love or hate? Save or destroy? Protect or exploit? When the enemy is at our door, should we welcome him in with open arms or point a gun in his face and be prepared to pull the trigger?
How Should We Treat Our Enemies?
Let’s turn to some Scripture. Romans 12:14-21 addresses this question at length. Paul makes it abundantly clear what our response should be. Here are the last three verses in the chapter:
19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:19-21
Comparing the doing of good deeds to heaping burning coals on your enemy’s head is a little of what I was trying to explain with Ender and the snakes. He chose to kiss the snake, to embrace what he had previously stomped on. Just as burning coals were used to purify metals, Ender’s gesture of kindness transformed the snake into his sister. The analogy would work better if the snakes symbolized Peter instead of Valentine, so maybe I’m reaching to draw conclusions here, but the main illustration still works in that love breaks the cycle of violence.
As Christians, we should leave vengeance for God. I think that is what Jesus meant in Matthew 5:38-48.
“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” Not necessarily that we should be pacifists, but that we shouldn’t give in to the urge to avenge ourselves. Instead, we are called to provide for our enemies, “to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Matthew 5:38-48
C.S. Lewis records his observation about this topic in Mere Christianity: “When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.”
Strikingly similar to the Ender’s Game quote, huh?
The way I see it, our binary choices no longer apply when we have Jesus. We don’t have to return evil for evil for justice to be served and consequently allow hate into our hearts. God is the ultimate judge. We can love our enemies by refusing to retaliate while still protecting others from their influence; we can be compassionate without condoning certain behaviors.
No Greater Love
What about war? When push comes to shove, should we be like Andrew Garfield in Hacksaw Ridge or Gary Cooper in High Noon? That is, strictly pacifist or willing to kill for the right cause?
When Ender was cornered in the bathroom, he unintentionally killed his attacker with no malice in his heart. Likewise, during the third invasion, he destroyed the buggers without actively hating them. In both cases, however, Ender was torn up inside by his actions. After the war was over, he did not return to Earth as a global hero, where he could easily have been corrupted and/or manipulated by Peter. He chose to devote the next stage of his life to learning about the buggers’ past, to serve as a ‘speaker for the dead,’ and to find a home for the one remaining hive queen.
Ender sacrificed his time and energy to prove to the world that the buggers were not the despicable beings the IF made them out to be. In other words, he protected what could not protect itself. I think this is the role of Christians in any conflict. To quote from Psalm 82: 3-4: “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
Whether you do this by “rescuing the weak and the needy” like Andrew Garfield in Hacksaw Ridge or by “defending the weak and the oppressed” and “delivering them from the hand of the wicked,” like Gary Cooper in High Noon, the correct motivations are on display.
“There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:13
How far should we go to protect? I’m going to agree with C. S. Lewis on this one. “We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it.” Like so many of our behaviors, the state of the heart is what matters most.
Children of God
I mentioned something about Lincoln at the beginning of this, so I think I’ll wrap this up with the words of a president who presided over an America split between friend and foe.
“Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” These were the words Lincoln spoke to an old woman who felt the South should face retribution for seceding. When I read this response, I was reminded of the burning coals verse in Romans. “Very often, you cool your enemy’s ire by treating them with dignity and respect. Thus, the enemy is destroyed, leaving only the human being.”
Lincoln’s question here mirrors the conciliatory attitude he displayed toward the South during his first inaugural address.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Abraham Lincoln
Except our commonality transcends that of ‘friend’. We’re made in the image of God, every single one of us. So rather than condemn another because of superficial or ideological differences, we should exhort each other, because we are the same at the deepest, most fundamental level.
Passions are high in society today. We are quick to declare an enemy and dig in our heels. And sometimes that reaction is justified. There are forces at work that are true threats to faith, family, and country. But, like Ender with the buggers, if our aim is to destroy the enemy, it would be wise to understand them first–their wants, their fears, their motivations, everything that makes them do what they do, act the way they act.
If we do that, maybe we’ll discover that Ender is right. Maybe it is impossible to see someone as they see themselves and not love them as a child of God.