Ender's Game Questions Chapters 12-15

Chapter 12 – Bonzo
1. Ender provoked Bonzo by insulting his honor. He said how Bonzo's father would be proud of him for trying to kill somebody smaller than him, and things like that.  Bonzo responded by trying to kill him at the showers.

2. Stilson was the bully who tried to hurt Ender when he still was on Earth at the beginning of the book, but then Ender ended up killing him.  Ender was thinking of him because when Bonzo was there with him at the showers, he was reminded of all his enemies and people who had tried to hurt him.

3. Ender still expects help from the teachers because he thinks that they care for him and want to make sure that no one gets hurt at the battle school because of liabilities, and he's only a kid so he doesn't realize that he has to care for himself.

4.  I knew that Stilson and Bonzo were killed because of the clues in the chapter where the teachers were talking about how there was a death at the battle school, and it was the second one in history, and things like that.  The teachers said "they didn't tell him about Stilson, either," so that's another clue.

5. Ender was justified because he was a kid, he didn't mean to kill them, and it was self defense.  The teachers didn't tell him about the deaths because Ender didn't want to kill them, so if he knew he had, then he wouldn't do as good at the battle school and think that he was just like Peter, but worse.

Chapter 13 – Valentine
1. “Perhaps it is impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.” This quote means that you can't pretend to be somebody else and not naturally act like that. An example of this idea is when Valentine started acting like Demosthenes  even though that's not who she was, because when she was asked a question, she would say something that Demosthenes would say without even thinking about it. 

2. It kind of is a natural, “good” instinct for humans to be killers (survival of the fittest) because we want to keep thriving, and need this instinct to do that if another species is trying to kill us and fight us.

3. When Ender and Valentine were on the raft, they talked about the battle school and Peter.  Ender reveals about himself and his enemies that he felt like a puppet and was being used by the teachers, and that he always won his battles because he knew what the enemies were thinking, but then he would like them, but still kill them.

4. Valentine’s conflicting thoughts about her brothers were how Peter had mellowed, but the battle school had made Ender into a killer. There roles have shifted because Ender doesn't want to kill anybody, but he does end up killing people, and Peter stopped being as aggressive.  Valentine felt like they were two sides of the same coin, but she didn't always know which side was which.

5. Graff told Ender that the bugger war was inevitable, because it was true because they had ships flying to the bugger planets already that would land soon, so they would have to have a war.

Chapter 14 – Ender’s Teacher
1. What disturbs Ender about Eros is how it used to be a bugger planet, and he was living inside bugger tunnels.  Ender figures out the truth about Eros by talking to Mazer Rackham, and asking him what evidence there was in Eros that buggers were smart creatures.

2. Mazer was going to be the only teacher Ender ever had because his other teachers never taught him anything.  Mazer said to Ender "You have learned nothing.  You have never had a teacher."

3. Mazer had been dishonest with Ender because he didn't want him to know he was going to kill all of the buggers, because he wouldn't have killed them if he'd known.  I don't think Ender could've handled the truth.

4. I think that they pushed the children too far because Petra and some other people started to break and not do as well, but it was worth it because they beat the buggers.

5. Genocide, or in the case of Ender's Game where an entire alien race is annihilated, xenocide is justified because the queen of the buggers "thought" to Ender that she forgave the human race for killing them, if Ender would help her hatch her eggs. The xenocide of the Buggers was inevitable because the human race didn't know that the buggers didn't want to hurt them.

Chapter 15 – Speaker for the Dead
1. Valentine said, “Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given to you by good people, by people who love you.” After what has happened in Ender’s life, he would think about this that it was part way true, but it's very hard to fill the roles by good people, and not bad too.

2. Ender listens to the evidence about the deaths of Stilson and Bonzo. His opinion about the deaths are not good because he feels like he is Peter and he didn't want to kill them, just hurt them enough so that they wouldn't hurt him anymore.

3. Valentine made sure that Ender could never return to Earth because she didn't want him to be in the hands of Peter, who pretty much had control of Earth.

4. What's ironic about Valentine’s statement about Peter saving millions of lives is that he is a killer at heart, so saving people seems like the opposite of his personality.

5. The knowledge that Ender gained to enable him to write The Hive-Queen was from the queen herself, when she told Ender how the buggers didn't know that humans were intelligent life forms, so they tried to kill us, but then realized what we were and left us alone, but it was too late.  So now they forgive us for killing them.

6. Ender publishes the book using the pseudonym “Speaker for the Dead” and not his own name because he doesn't want people to know that he wrote it because they wouldn't like him and think he cared about the buggers.