ummmmmm.... yeahno. It's definitely subconciously engineered propaganda, but of a very different kind. And I honestly think unintentionally so. I know it had very interesting effects on my thought process while I was reading it - well, as far as I read - I stopped after the first three books - but coming back and reading just the first one again many years later, with more perspective on life in general and more information on the author in particular, I wasn't able to buy into it in the same way I did back then. There are biases within biases in them thar hills. Not all of them bad, and I'm not implying that - but they *are* so layered, and there *are* both rational and specious constructs in them - which I suppose means I still find value in them, even if I can't necessarily *agree* with them.
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Which has absolutely nothing to do with your post.
I'm just going to sit over here by the punch bowl and be quiet now....
I just find it difficult to buy into the whole "Ender committed xenocide (however unknowingly), and Hitler committed genocide, so therefore Ender is a disguised Hitler" train of thought.
I mean, okay, I'm simplifying the theory considerably, but it's fucking science fiction. It really seems you can't find any sci-fi author without finding some attendant crackpot theory. (One of my favorite crackpot theories, to laugh at, mind you, was that Heinlein was a misogynist.)
Oh, wait - I just caught the Heinlein reference, and nearly laughed out loud - Heinlein's 'problem' was that he loved women too much, never that he hated them. And, he grew up in the early 1900s, which is something that shouldn't be held against him....
Yeah, well, recent news is that J. Grant, beloved author, is also a rape apologist, so apparently all writers are slavering, woman-hating animals who should be taken out behind the barn and shot at the first opportunity.
Sometimes a story is just a story.</I.
Indeed.
Then there was also the whole part of the book where Ender, you know, didn't know he was committing genocide? Or the fact that he was truly remorseful of the fact (to the point where he carried a queen bug around with him for however many hundreds of years of space travel after that).
I just find it difficult to buy into the whole "Ender committed xenocide (however unknowingly), and Hitler committed genocide, so therefore Ender is a disguised Hitler" train of thought.
The "coincidences" run *just a little* deeper than that.
The classic essay on the topic is available here. (http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html)
I mean, we're not talking just about the identical childhood, the identical family, the genocide (EnderHitler did it *by accident*), the identical, down to the age of virginity loss, sex lives. We're talking about a book whose *universe* is premised on *the specific forms of Eugenics espoused by the nazi party* where there are a *crazy* number of EXACT MATCHES.
Card himself being who he is? Not helping, either.
1) Honestly, the only people who claim that Hitler committed genocide by accident are usually lumped in with the people who claim that the genocide didn't happen. Cah-razies.
2) Third child? Didn't have sex until age 37? Wow... you know who else that points to? Me. Damn, I must be Hitler.
3) And actually, little Adolf was the third child that lived past childhood. There were six other kids before him, making Adolf the sixth child of his father. (Alois Jr., Angela, Gustav (died at age 2), Ida (died at age 1), Otto (died shortly after childbirth), then Adolf, and then a couple other kids after that.) I must have missed the part in Ender's Game where his parents went on to have kid after kid after kid after kid. No? Only three? Huh.
4) Card wasn't the first sci-fi author to use eugenics in sci-fi since WWII, and he wasn't the last either. Hell's bells, they used it to create Khan Noonian Singh in Star Trek almost two full decades earlier.
5) I must have also missed the part in history where Hitler survived the war, realized his horrible mistakes, and created space-Israel 3000 years later. Well, we're not 3000 years past WWII yet, so I suppose it could still happen.
Yeah, Card's personal politics and beliefs are not ones I agree with... but I'm sorry, the whole Ender=Hitler thing seems tenuous at best.
Yes. Ender killed the Formics by accident. He thought he was still doing battle simulations. The fact that the "battle simulations" were real battles was unknown to Ender. Hitler ordered the extermination of Jews, Gypsies and others he found undesirable ON PURPOSE.
If you're going to compare Ender to Hitler, it really falls apart on that part alone. The adults running the battle school specifically hid what Ender was really doing from Ender himself. There's no comparison there to Hitler's orders for genocide because he knew what the fuck was happening.
So, you're saying that none of the rest of the parallels can possibly exist, and Card couldn't possibly have been writing a sympathetic version of Hitler as described in the two essays I linked you to, because his version of Hitler is sympathetic?
I'm saying that I don't see Ender as Card's sympathetic version of Hitler.
Yeah, congratulations, there's an essay comparing Ender to Hitler, based largely on a number of coincidences. Yes, Hitler committed genocide. Yes, Ender committed xenocide. That doesn't mean that Hitler=Ender.
There's also literary criticism of Heinlein as a misogynist, of Asimov as a bland writer, and I'm sure someone once called Arthur C. Clarke a Luddite. It doesn't make any of it true.
Sometimes a story is just a story. Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. (And really, you didn't seem to consider my rebuttals of some of those coincidences.)
Yes, Card can be a dick. So what? flemco can be an ass, but I don't see anyone contending that Two Lumps is a modern characterization of the story of Cain and Abel.
If Eben killed Snooch, lied about it to Mom, and then got banished from The House with a tattoo that says "I killed my brother so you better not kill me"?
You'd get comparisons. Even if the killing was accidental as Eben accidentally tripped Snooch in front of the roomba.
Anyway. I'm not worried about you agreeing or disagreeing with me in the end. I, of course, think I'm right, but you thinking I'm wrong doesn't really make my life any more difficult. What was confusing was when you said the similarities didn't exist.
Well, you also have to understand... I think roughly 98% of literary criticism/deconstruction/whatever is so much pigs' elbows (aka bullshit).
I've seen far too many papers on "what Shakespeare really meant" or whatever to take any of it seriously, because frankly, the only person who truly knows what an author meant when they wrote something is that author.
But these types who insist that <insert author here> "means this because I say so" can't seem to accept that (a) they could be wrong or (b) that maybe, a story is just a story... that maybe the author wrote it to make a buck. They can't accept that because it means that the hours, days, weeks or months that they spent deconstructing this work of fiction was just so much wasted time. That Injun Joe's character in "Tom Sawyer" is not some subtle allegory of the plight of the Native American, that Heinlein's use of polygamy in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is not a criticism of traditional marriage.
No, EVERYTHING has to have a meaning.
But sometimes, it doesn't.
Yes, Mrs. Radford brings up a lot of similarities. But she doesn't seem to want to accept that maybe it's all that they are. Like I pointed out, I'm a third kid, I'm 37... am I supposed to be Hitler right now? I think not.
I hate to think what kind of bullshit people will come up with to justify their looney theories about the whole Twilight garbage.
Twilight's pretty clearly Mormon theology (all the way down to "each Saved person is given a superpower by God") wrapped around lousy writing and creepy-assed "stalking is love" bullshit.
(Mormon theology - specifically, the tenets of the faith involving describing, defining, baptising-by-proxy, and thus rehabilitating and making holy people and things not of the faith - colloquially known as "name it and claim it" - is another one of the reasons Card writing about Hitler is eminently plausible.)
Oh, and: This one's fun, too. (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034) Less about the work, more about the history of the essay itself and how Card reacted.
*shrug* I'm able to disagree with an author's beliefs and still enjoy their fiction. And having read "Ender's Game", "Ender's Shadow" and "Speaker for the Dead", I just don't see the Ender/Hitler connection.
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Which has absolutely nothing to do with your post.
I'm just going to sit over here by the punch bowl and be quiet now....
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I mean, okay, I'm simplifying the theory considerably, but it's fucking science fiction. It really seems you can't find any sci-fi author without finding some attendant crackpot theory. (One of my favorite crackpot theories, to laugh at, mind you, was that Heinlein was a misogynist.)
Sometimes a story is just a story.
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Which just shows that literary criticism is roughly 98% bullshit.
I can only imagine what people will think of Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King in 50 years.
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TO THE WALL - TO THE WALL - TO THE WALL
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It's almost like being told Rand was a fascist. She was a nutcase, but definitely not fascist.
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The "coincidences" run *just a little* deeper than that.
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I mean, we're not talking just about the identical childhood, the identical family, the genocide (EnderHitler did it *by accident*), the identical, down to the age of virginity loss, sex lives. We're talking about a book whose *universe* is premised on *the specific forms of Eugenics espoused by the nazi party* where there are a *crazy* number of EXACT MATCHES.
Card himself being who he is? Not helping, either.
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2) Third child? Didn't have sex until age 37? Wow... you know who else that points to? Me. Damn, I must be Hitler.
3) And actually, little Adolf was the third child that lived past childhood. There were six other kids before him, making Adolf the sixth child of his father. (Alois Jr., Angela, Gustav (died at age 2), Ida (died at age 1), Otto (died shortly after childbirth), then Adolf, and then a couple other kids after that.) I must have missed the part in Ender's Game where his parents went on to have kid after kid after kid after kid. No? Only three? Huh.
4) Card wasn't the first sci-fi author to use eugenics in sci-fi since WWII, and he wasn't the last either. Hell's bells, they used it to create Khan Noonian Singh in Star Trek almost two full decades earlier.
5) I must have also missed the part in history where Hitler survived the war, realized his horrible mistakes, and created space-Israel 3000 years later. Well, we're not 3000 years past WWII yet, so I suppose it could still happen.
Yeah, Card's personal politics and beliefs are not ones I agree with... but I'm sorry, the whole Ender=Hitler thing seems tenuous at best.
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Did you even *read* the essay?
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If you're going to compare Ender to Hitler, it really falls apart on that part alone. The adults running the battle school specifically hid what Ender was really doing from Ender himself. There's no comparison there to Hitler's orders for genocide because he knew what the fuck was happening.
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Yeah, congratulations, there's an essay comparing Ender to Hitler, based largely on a number of coincidences. Yes, Hitler committed genocide. Yes, Ender committed xenocide. That doesn't mean that Hitler=Ender.
There's also literary criticism of Heinlein as a misogynist, of Asimov as a bland writer, and I'm sure someone once called Arthur C. Clarke a Luddite. It doesn't make any of it true.
Sometimes a story is just a story. Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. (And really, you didn't seem to consider my rebuttals of some of those coincidences.)
Yes, Card can be a dick. So what?
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You'd get comparisons. Even if the killing was accidental as Eben accidentally tripped Snooch in front of the roomba.
Anyway. I'm not worried about you agreeing or disagreeing with me in the end. I, of course, think I'm right, but you thinking I'm wrong doesn't really make my life any more difficult. What was confusing was when you said the similarities didn't exist.
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I've seen far too many papers on "what Shakespeare really meant" or whatever to take any of it seriously, because frankly, the only person who truly knows what an author meant when they wrote something is that author.
But these types who insist that <insert author here> "means this because I say so" can't seem to accept that (a) they could be wrong or (b) that maybe, a story is just a story... that maybe the author wrote it to make a buck. They can't accept that because it means that the hours, days, weeks or months that they spent deconstructing this work of fiction was just so much wasted time. That Injun Joe's character in "Tom Sawyer" is not some subtle allegory of the plight of the Native American, that Heinlein's use of polygamy in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is not a criticism of traditional marriage.
No, EVERYTHING has to have a meaning.
But sometimes, it doesn't.
Yes, Mrs. Radford brings up a lot of similarities. But she doesn't seem to want to accept that maybe it's all that they are. Like I pointed out, I'm a third kid, I'm 37... am I supposed to be Hitler right now? I think not.
I hate to think what kind of bullshit people will come up with to justify their looney theories about the whole Twilight garbage.
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(Mormon theology - specifically, the tenets of the faith involving describing, defining, baptising-by-proxy, and thus rehabilitating and making holy people and things not of the faith - colloquially known as "name it and claim it" - is another one of the reasons Card writing about Hitler is eminently plausible.)
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Wouldn't surprise me. Deep core beliefs will leak into creative works like they do anything else.
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