Adults may have clumsy, fat hands (see the first quote – we’re not just saying that to insult ourselves), but children have some problems, too. For one thing, as Val makes clear here, no one takes children’s ideas seriously. Peter has a solution for that, which is to hide their ages online. What’s curious here is that children have problems, but they can find ways to get around those. Can the adults? Well, sure: they can manipulate and use the kids.

We tend to think of manipulation as a bad thing, but here Major Imbu (the computer specialist) is describing how the mind game is meant to mess around with students for the sake of their own happiness. That is, the mind game seems like therapy: it manipulates the children into working through some issues. Is this still manipulation?

Peter is the most manipulative of the Wiggin kids. Or is he? Maybe he’s merely the most open about it. Here he is, planning with Val about how they should manipulate the world. In this case, his form of manipulation will be almost entirely verbal. (By contrast, the school teachers try to manipulate Ender through a number of techniques, such as isolation.) Peter and Val are useful for us because they talk a lot about their plans for manipulation (so we can see exactly how they plan to do it); and also because they demonstrate that manipulation is not totally about Ender. (See also 9.37 and 9.63.)

In our opinion, this is one of the most interesting comments about manipulation in <em>Ender’s Game</em>. Here Val notes that Peter’s manipulation of her doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying. In this case, he’s crying in front of her and saying he needs her help. On one hand, that’s a calculated move – he wants her help and he’ll do whatever it takes to get her to. On the other hand, maybe he’s crying because he’s actually upset. It’s useful for us to realize that not all manipulation is lies. As Graff (probably) notes, sometimes telling the truth will get the desired result too (3.8).

Ender isn’t the only one facing a war; Val has her own war against Peter, but hers takes a different turn. Now, let’s be honest here. Are Peter and Val really at war? Well, they’re not shooting at each other or putting mines in each other’s bedrooms, but notice that, even if Val isn’t shooting at Peter, she’s thinking about her relationship as something like a war: she’s “surrendered.” Why is their relationship sometimes described in such terms?

This is Major Imbu thinking about the phrase “End of the World.” In some ways, “private meaning” has to be the most isolating thing in the world. Because if some phrase has a private meaning for one person, then that one person won’t be able to communicate that meaning to others.

Ender is probably the most isolated character in the book, but since the Wiggin kids are so similar in other ways, what about isolation? Here Peter is telling Val that his urge to control was so overpowering that he couldn’t really connect with his brother and sister. Don’t get us wrong – Peter really seems like a monster at the beginning. But it’s interesting to think that, in some ways, he might be just as isolated as Ender.

Graff starts to explain why isolation is necessary for Ender’s training (and why Ender didn’t get Val’s letters), but then he stops midway to say that he doesn’t need to defend himself. Which is what people always say when they <em>want</em> to defend themselves. We pulled this quote because in it, Graff nicely explains the positive side of isolation (“the optimum environment for creativity”); but the fact that he wants to defend himself shows that there’s something wrong about purposely isolating a kid. No matter the benefit of isolation, we should recognize the unhappiness it causes.

This is Peter’s view of the world and the opportunity that’s about to open with the end of the bugger war. According to Peter, there’s competition all over– it’s not just about who gets into the Battle School and performs best in the war. According to Peter, democracy is also a competitive field that allows the best person to rise to the top. And Peter sees himself as that man.

Something like this comes up a few times in <em>Ender’s Game</em> – see 9.182, 11.62, and 14.237. In all of these cases, Ender’s friends are never very friendly with him. (Or vice versa – let’s not blame anyone yet.) In all these cases, people focus on the game and on Ender’s responsibility as commander. In some ways, Ender’s position as commander gets in the way of his potential as a friend. Which raises some questions: does friendship require some sort of equality? Is there any way that Ender can be both a commander and a friend?

Ender might be the best in some ways, but for all his work in Battle School, we’re reminded that he’s constantly being manipulated (which makes him seem a little less smart). If we want an example of some one who’s smart enough to do the manipulating, we might want to look at Peter and Val. For one thing, they work together to manipulate the world. But there are also serious questions about which one of them is manipulating the other. Here Val comes out and thinks about the issue. At its heart, the question is, who is the smartest Wiggin? Which might remind us that all the competitions and battles happen in regular life as well, not just at Battle School.

Ender’s the focus of the book, but his sister Val probably comes in second in terms of page-count. Just like Ender, Val worries that she has Peter’s hankering for power and violence. They haven’t yet started their Locke and Demosthenes plan, but Peter is about to convince her. (In fact, Val wants to be convinced (9.107), so maybe there <em>is</em> some Peter in her.) But here’s a slight difference between Val and Ender: in this case, the narrator seems to come out and say that Val has some similarity to Peter, but the narrator never ever says that about Ender.

This is Ender’s predicament at school: although he’s the super-best, gold-star soldier, he’s still a soldier doing what someone else wants him to do. (He identifies the game as one area where he’s free, but that’s a little silly to us – a game, after all, has rules that confine the player.) Ender isn’t free and he’s pretty depressed. Luckily, though, now he knows why he’s depressed and he can go off and deal with his feelings (through the mind game).