While Ender Wiggin is attending Command School, he practices his leadership and strategy skills through a device called the Simulator. This device displays a virtual reality in which he can command his fleet through a series of battles against the buggers. However, Ender and his peers are unaware that each battle fought through the Simulator is an actual fight against the buggers; each life lost in war is one lost in reality. The Command School authorities keep this information from the students until after their final evaluation, for they are worried that Ender’s empathy will overcome his urge to kill if he is aware that he is taking real lives. Consequently, the students do not know that their last evaluation is the final battle in the real
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However, he signed a pact with the military, signed a pact to kill, the moment that he chose to follow Colonel Graff to a new life of training to become a commander. As Ender and Graff left his family, the colonel noted, “‘[From now on, you] stay at the pleasure of the International Fleet. Do you understand that?’” (Card 26). At the time, Ender nodded and unknowingly pledged his freedom of choice and control over to the International Fleet and its authority. As he spent more time away from home, he realized that “[he] had no control over his own life. They ran everything. They made all the choices. Only the game was left to him, that was all” (Card 151). Thus, the Command School authorities used this to their advantage. They took the only thing that Ender was in control of and manipulated it to allow their best soldier to be willing to fight. The students were told that it was just another game, just another practice, just another battle in the test administered by the government. When the leaders administered the final evaluation to Ender and his peers, they had every right to trick the students. Each student volunteered to be tricked the moment they stepped into the hands of the International Fleet. The military officers were doing no wrong by misleading the students, for it was the only way they would have accomplished
However, he signed a pact with the military, signed a pact to kill, the moment that he chose to follow Colonel Graff to a new life of training to become a commander. As Ender and Graff left his family, the colonel noted, “‘[From now on, you] stay at the pleasure of the International Fleet. Do you understand that?’” (Card 26). At the time, Ender nodded and unknowingly pledged his freedom of choice and control over to the International Fleet and its authority. As he spent more time away from home, he realized that “[he] had no control over his own life. They ran everything. They made all the choices. Only the game was left to him, that was all” (Card 151). Thus, the Command School authorities used this to their advantage. They took the only thing that Ender was in control of and manipulated it to allow their best soldier to be willing to fight. The students were told that it was just another game, just another practice, just another battle in the test administered by the government. When the leaders administered the final evaluation to Ender and his peers, they had every right to trick the students. Each student volunteered to be tricked the moment they stepped into the hands of the International Fleet. The military officers were doing no wrong by misleading the students, for it was the only way they would have accomplished