Critical Analysis Of Jon Kessel's Insight: Did Card Create An Innocent Killer

Kessel’s Insight: Did Card Create an Innocent Killer?
Jon Kessel, the author of “Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality”, a critical essay on Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, has an interesting take on the morality of Ender’s character, and his supposed innocence in general. He compares many things to his own real-life childhood, as the main character is so relatable. Kessel’s essay is an extremely sharp-witted, eye-opening piece, as intended by him, that is important to the more ethically conscious audience. It also allows the reader to understand Ender’s Game on a much deeper level, offering inquisitive, and often antagonizing theories to question Card’s own internal conflict that he reflects in his writing. The purpose of his essay is to “examine the methods Card uses to construct… guiltless genocide, point out some

One point that Kessel brings up is how Ender has no safe haven. None. Not with his family, not with his parents, not school, not the government, not any adult, or even child can be trusted or relied upon for him. Even Peter, his brother, abused him; telling him things like “I could kill you like this. Press and press until you’re dead” (Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, p. 12). His only person to confide in, Valentine, his sister, was ripped away from him and then used against him by Graff. Not only are they unreliable, but the adults lie to him and manipulate. Kessel questions whether this is a healthy thing to to a young child, and whether or not it should be passed on to the young-adult audience of this book. Well, it shouldn’t. Creating this tragic and dramatic example of a 6-year-old is a terrible thing to introduce to such impressionable people. Card got carried away with the level of isolation that he