Ender here is around eleven or twelve years old, and if he hasn’t gone through puberty yet, he probably will soon. This is a reminder that Ender is still a kid in some ways – he may know how to kill an entire species, but he doesn’t understand sex. (Or possibly humor. He’s not a very funny kid.)

And here we have the baldest statement of the role of manipulation in this book: the school administrators had to manipulate Ender into having a set of skills and attitudes in order to reach a certain objective. (This whole section in the book is worth re-reading.) This part always makes us rethink the importance of manipulation in this book – and youth too: perhaps they needed someone young enough to be fooled.

OK, let’s get it out there: how does Mazer know that “there was no other way you could have done it”? Well, that tiny genocidal mistake to one side, Mazer shows us here how all of Ender’s wars work: there’s no such thing as a limited war with Ender – it’s all or nothing. (And usually it’s all.)

This is Ender’s thought on meeting Mazer Rackham – here’s a guy he can really relate to, since they’re both super geniuses and outcasts. If we were making a score sheet and counting points for each idea of community in this book – and we are – then this would be another point scored for the idea that you can only form a community with someone who’s your equal.

Like Graff, Mazer loves Ender (see 14.308), but doesn’t shows it until the end. And so Ender is surrounded by friends, he just doesn't know it. Which is one of those funny moments: Ender knows that he’s Bean’s secret friend, but he doesn’t understand that other people might be his secret friend too.

In case you forgot how smart Ender is – maybe it slipped your mind that he learned arithmetic when he was three (1.54) – here we get another little (math-based) reminder. Ender is so smart that the right answer just seems to come to him. (This isn’t so unusual – the right answer comes to us all the time. And so does the wrong answer.)

While Ender and Val mostly worry about whether or not they’re like Peter, there are occasional flashes of other thoughts about identity. Like here. Mazer and Ender are talking about Petra’s breakdown, and Ender worries that he might crack up too, since part of his training was with Petra. Ender doesn’t crack the way Petra does, though – he’s cracking, what with the crazy dreams and eating his hands during his sleep, but he’s cracking differently. Ultimately, Ender doesn’t seem like Petra, but this thought does raise some interesting connections between the themes of identity and community – as if a person’s identity were related to his or her surroundings.

What’s the difference between killing someone and being a killer? Ender admits to killing but keeps asserting that he’s “not a killer.” Basically, it seems like Ender is asserting that the difference between killing and being a killer is because he didn’t “want to kill them all.” Or is the distinction something else – is it a question of identity that Ender is refusing? (Like, what if you type – does that make you a typist? Well, maybe for the time that you’re typing it does, but what about after?) This is the major issue in the book, and it’s a question that we can’t answer.

This is Ender, on his last day in “school,” when, for the first time in a while, Mazer isn’t around to tell him where to go. So, Ender is free, but suddenly doesn’t know what to do. We’re not entirely sure what’s going on here. Could it be that Ender has just gotten so used to being shepherded that he’s lost without Mazer? As if Ender’s life were reduced just to fighting the buggers and didn’t have any other ideas? Or is something else going on? Did you feel like Ender’s reaction to freedom should make us reconsider whether “freedom” is all it’s cracked up to be?