Ender’s worst enemies seem to be the childhood bullies he faces; but many of Ender’s friends appear to think the problem is the teachers and the other adults. (This quote is said by Dink, but a similar issue comes up with Petra earlier (7.189).) This sets up the idea that there might be a war between the generations going on here.

According to Dink, Battle School is stealing kids' childhood. Dink has memories of his brother and the stuff his brother is interested in (cars, girls). Measured against that, the Battle School students are – to put it mildly – crazy. As he says later, one of their problems is that they’re trying to act like adults.

Here’s Dink talking about how he’s going to stay out of the system by refusing the school’s promotions. At the same time, he loves the game so much he can’t quit – so it’s more like he’s meeting the school halfway. Even if he’s compromising, he’s not being manipulated (according to him) because he knows what they’re trying to do.

This is Dink being Dink – according to him, if everyone thinks the aliens are out to get us, then the military can effectively have control. And who doesn’t want to have control, right? Man, being in charge of everything is just super great. (Sarcasm alert.) This helpfully reminds us that the war (which Ender never really sees) is considered really important – but that no one else has really seen this war either. (With the exception of Mazer.)

This is the message that Rose de Nose gets across to Ender when he joins Salamander Army – and Ender really internalizes it. Even though these are just games, winning comes to be a life-and-death situation. Partially because it really is – there might be aliens coming to attack them. But partially this focus on winning the games is… well, maybe some students are losing their sense of what’s really important.

This is Dink’s diagnosis of why Rose is crazy (and why everyone else is also nuts). The students at the Battle School have elevated competition to being the only thing they care about. But Dink remembers that this is just a game, even though he loves it; and he recognizes that the uncertainty of the game can be a little damaging to these kids’ psyches. Competition can bring out the best of us, but it can also deform the players.

Do we trust Graff when he says this? We’ve seen how smart Ender is (see the first quote in this time), so maybe this is just a reminder that Ender is the best at what he does. But when Graff says “stronger,” he’s not talking about physical strength – he’s talking about Ender’s identity. Do you agree with him that Ender has a strong character?

This is Ender’s worst nightmare – that, when he looks into a mirror, he’ll see Peter looking out. Now, this is the same mind game in which Ender killed a giant, so the game has some evidence that Ender is a killer, just like his brother. (In fact, Ender kills a snake in the mind game right before this, just like Peter kills small animals in Chapter 9.) Now, only the game tells Ender that he’s like Peter, while just about every one tells Ender that he <em>isn’t</em> like Peter. Interesting. What do you make of that? Who's right?

We’re back to non-Ender confinement. Here, Graff is complaining that he doesn’t want people to mess up his finely-tuned system of making Ender unhappy. Graff is the principal of the school – can we even imagine anyone higher up than him? Well, as it so happens, we can: there’s a whole group of people (politicians) who could force Graff to take some actions, and he’s trying to avoid those folks.

Here’s Dink’s best line, we think, and he gets a lot of good lines in this book. (We heart Dink.) But here’s Dink’s philosophy on freedom: there are a lot of people out there who will claim some power over you, and you can often retain some of your freedom if you’re willing to deal with the consequences too. (So, for instance, Ender refuses some order of Rose’s that Rose doesn’t have the authority to give; but then Rose gets his revenge by giving Ender an order that he <em>does</em> have the authority to give.)