Like THEPINKDOOM this is the theme that most stuck out to me throughout the book. I'm not sure how much Card just wanted us to suspend disbelief and accept the maturity with which these (very, very young) children are acting, accepting it at face value. I had trouble buying into it, and I'll tell you why.
It's not just that the kids are smart. Child geniuses and prodigies are not at all unheard-of. The problem is that these kids are acting with an awareness of concepts and ideas that can only be understood through experience. They don't arise out of hyperintellect or superior intuition. Peter's ability to track Russian troop movements through abnormal levels of activity on trains, for example. Ender's understanding of the intricacies of war strategy (yes, some of this is intuitive, but a lot of Ender's understanding seems to be of the sort that we would attribute to especially talented West Point graduates). These are debatable subjects, granted, but I feel like Card's portraying children who are 6 or 7 years of age in such a mature light, giving them an incredible understanding of language, and of completely adult themes, is sort of unbelievable.
I guess the biggest problem I have is that innocence goes right out of the window. The very phenomenon of childhood itself is disregarded. Almost all of the kids start out adults at the beginning, even though they've barely been toilet trained.
That said, I loved this book.
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2 comments:
Like in said in my comment to the previous post, I've never found the portrayal of the children to be that unbelievable. I'm sure we'll discuss this at length in class, but given all the different sorts of prodigies we have today, a child like Ender who is just naturally capable of thinking in the strategic way which he does. Who knows, maybe I just WANT to believe that it's possible since it goes along with my reading of the book. But since a few people on the blogs are making this case, I'd like to see someone give some evidence (psychological, psysiological, etc) as to why this is NOT possible before I'd believe it.
Honestly I don't have any psychological evidence, cause I haven't studied psychology, to back up my feeling about this, other than my own empirical understanding of how cognizant development works. I just can't, can't rationalize a kid being able to jump so far into the adult world by the time he's six without having gone through the processes that everyone else has to go through to become "mature" in this way. Cause it's really not intellectual development we're talking about, it's sociological development. There are lingustic aspects, inter-personal aspects, etc. I don't know. I think you may be right that an enjoyment of the book colored many people's ability to accept this idea. But I found myself just a little too cynical about it. But hey, it's sci-fi after all.
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