Ender's Game Summary

Ender spends his time at command school alone or with Graff, working mostly with the simulator. In this game, Ender starts commanding just a single fighter however, is soon in charge of an entire fleet. After a year Ender finds it easy, and he explains this to Graff. The very next day Ender wakes up to an old man sitting cross-legged on the floor. Mazer Rackham introduces himself to Ender by attacking him and pinning him, explaining to Ender that he will be his teacher because he will also be his enemy: “There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer” (263). Together they watch tapes of the first and second invasions. Rackham explains to him why the buggers stopped fighting after he attacked

Humans can carry out different strategies all at once, unlike the buggers. Ender is moved into a new simulator where he is to command an entire fleet. However, this time with real squadron leaders made up of all his friends from Battle School. Mazer Rakham tells him that the next battle will be his final examination in Command School. Ender wins the battle by destroying the planet, and the room erupts in cheers. Rackham tells him that he has actually been the fleet commander of the Third Invasion the whole time and that he just destroyed the buggers completely. Ender is angry with Graff for using him. He did not want to hurt anyone and now has destroyed an entire race without his knowledge. Graff explains that he had to trick Ender. Ender does not hate the buggers, and he would not have consciously fought this war if given the choice: “We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers [...] but somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed” (298). However, Graff knew that. This is why they had to make it all seem like a

He discovers the tower and climbs up to the room with the mirror. Ender realizes that the buggers must have built all of this for him in order to leave him a message. Behind the mirror Ender finds the pupa of a bugger queen, where the queen communicates with him. She shows him the images of the battles, but they are from the buggers' point of view. She then sends images to his mind of what he needs to do to start a new bugger civilization and let her live again. Ender figures out that they learned his thoughts through the ansible. This was, after all, the humans attempt at mimicking bugger communication. She tells him that the buggers did not know that humans were able to think, “but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other’s dreams” (321). When the buggers figured out that human beings were capable of thought, they did not attack again. They do not blame humans for killing them. However, Ender blames himself because he always knew that there had to be a way to fix things other than war. Ender endured all of the manipulation to win a war that never needed to have been fought. Now, the queen has given him a chance to undo his