Ender’s Game relation to modern day
Far too often, human beings perform nefarious actions based on a prejudice that is either false or simply irrelevant. Orson Scott Card’s science fiction novel Ender’s Game is based off of preconceptions humans had on a foreign species known as “Buggers”. The main character Ender is assigned the task of working with other gifted children, like himself, to perform a complete genocide on this unfamiliar species. Ender learns much about the buggers and himself throughout his journey, showing that discrimination is often only a result of a fear of the unknown. Similar occurrences in the modern day to that xenocide based on a lack of knowledge, are the Holocaust and acts of homophobia. Card’s novel displays an …show more content…
Heinous deeds from ignorance are not just a work of fiction, they have happened in history, and they still happen to this day. In all different cultures and time periods, humans have committed egregious acts to one another base solely on the fact that we do not care to try and understand each other.
In Ender’s Game, humans perform an intense genocide on the entire bugger race. Likewise, one of (if not the) largest attempted genocides in history is the Holocaust. During the time of World War II, Jewish people were severely discriminated against by non-jewish Germans, led by military leader Adolf Hitler, that occupied majority of Europe. Roughly six million Jews were killed, all because of a prejudice held that contained no rationality. Similar to this extreme discrimination, in Ender’s Game, humans had a plan of extermination on the buggers before they even really knew much about them. Both perpetrators (Nazis, and humans against buggers) seemed to act on their fear of the unknown, which accurately reflects our …show more content…
One example is homophobia. A portion of people in the United States are strongly opposed to romantic relations involving two humans of the same sex. Some of those that oppose same-sex marriage and relations have strong religious values that they believe do not accept gay unification, and some just have a baseless hostility towards homosexuals. The humans from Ender’s Game share a similar hostility towards the buggers, because they are completely foreign, and creatures of the unknown seem to cause terror to the human race. Many people that have a strong bias against gay people have their opinion only because its all that they know. Centuries upon centuries of humanity were only used to the idea of heterosexuality, and the thought of homosexuality frightens some citizens a bit. This fear spirals into a hatred that many have towards homosexuals, and children grow up learning that heterosexuals are the “norm” and are all that is accepted by a higher power. This hatred has been going on for all of humanity's existence, and often times it leads to extremely inhumane acts. Likewise, the citizens in Ender’s Game are taught to hate the buggers, so since they have no reason not to, they do. Card provided an example of just how little about the buggers the humans knew by having Graff comment, “But the buggers are out there. Ten billion, a hundred billion, a million billion of them, for all we know.
Far too often, human beings perform nefarious actions based on a prejudice that is either false or simply irrelevant. Orson Scott Card’s science fiction novel Ender’s Game is based off of preconceptions humans had on a foreign species known as “Buggers”. The main character Ender is assigned the task of working with other gifted children, like himself, to perform a complete genocide on this unfamiliar species. Ender learns much about the buggers and himself throughout his journey, showing that discrimination is often only a result of a fear of the unknown. Similar occurrences in the modern day to that xenocide based on a lack of knowledge, are the Holocaust and acts of homophobia. Card’s novel displays an …show more content…
Heinous deeds from ignorance are not just a work of fiction, they have happened in history, and they still happen to this day. In all different cultures and time periods, humans have committed egregious acts to one another base solely on the fact that we do not care to try and understand each other.
In Ender’s Game, humans perform an intense genocide on the entire bugger race. Likewise, one of (if not the) largest attempted genocides in history is the Holocaust. During the time of World War II, Jewish people were severely discriminated against by non-jewish Germans, led by military leader Adolf Hitler, that occupied majority of Europe. Roughly six million Jews were killed, all because of a prejudice held that contained no rationality. Similar to this extreme discrimination, in Ender’s Game, humans had a plan of extermination on the buggers before they even really knew much about them. Both perpetrators (Nazis, and humans against buggers) seemed to act on their fear of the unknown, which accurately reflects our …show more content…
One example is homophobia. A portion of people in the United States are strongly opposed to romantic relations involving two humans of the same sex. Some of those that oppose same-sex marriage and relations have strong religious values that they believe do not accept gay unification, and some just have a baseless hostility towards homosexuals. The humans from Ender’s Game share a similar hostility towards the buggers, because they are completely foreign, and creatures of the unknown seem to cause terror to the human race. Many people that have a strong bias against gay people have their opinion only because its all that they know. Centuries upon centuries of humanity were only used to the idea of heterosexuality, and the thought of homosexuality frightens some citizens a bit. This fear spirals into a hatred that many have towards homosexuals, and children grow up learning that heterosexuals are the “norm” and are all that is accepted by a higher power. This hatred has been going on for all of humanity's existence, and often times it leads to extremely inhumane acts. Likewise, the citizens in Ender’s Game are taught to hate the buggers, so since they have no reason not to, they do. Card provided an example of just how little about the buggers the humans knew by having Graff comment, “But the buggers are out there. Ten billion, a hundred billion, a million billion of them, for all we know.