{"id":1470,"date":"2007-01-27T20:23:01","date_gmt":"2007-01-27T20:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2007-01-27T20:23:01","modified_gmt":"2007-01-27T20:23:01","slug":"critic_at_large_13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1470","title":{"rendered":"Critic At Large: Ender’s Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read this book when I was in college and decided to see how I’d react to it some fifteen years later. Ender’s Game<\/i><\/a> follows Ender Wiggin, a child prodigy who is selected to undergo training at the Battle School, an elite academy created by a precariously united Earth to train soldiers to fight an alien race known as the buggers. We watch Ender undergo a grueling transformation from little boy to child soldier, a journey that is shaped by Ender’s conflicting capacities for both empathy and brutal violence. <\/p>\n

Whatever I think of Card’s homophobic rantings<\/a>, I can’t deny his ability to write compelling characters. In college, I identified strongly with Ender because he reminded me of myself; a brainy kid who was something of a social outcast. But I now realize that Card was careful not to make Ender too sympathetic. He has some deep flaws that I found much more disquieting on this rereading. <\/div>\n

The other aspects of the story still hold up well, although I’m surprised that my younger self didn’t see the resolution coming from a mile away. You’ll have to read it yourself to see what I mean. <\/p>\n

Next up is Sam Harris’ The End of Faith<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read this book when I was in college and decided to see how I’d react to it some fifteen years later. Ender’s Game follows Ender Wiggin, a child prodigy who is selected to undergo training at the Battle School, an elite academy created by a precariously united Earth to train soldiers to fight an […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-nI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}