Speaker for the Dead
Speaker for the Dead, though a sort of sequel to Ender's Game is a completely different kind of story than Ender's Game is. Where Ender's Game is a story of one boy's training, a story of education and manipulation, and, finally, a story about the consequences of not seeing or even attempting accurately see the Other, Speaker for the Dead is about mature individuals, connections between people (whether family members, lovers, or community members), and what it takes to get to know and respect the Other. For this reason, I preferred Speaker for the Dead to Ender's Game.
Ender, following his destruction of the buggers in Ender's Game has become the Speaker for the Dead and travels the universe looking for a safe world to install the remaining hive queen who survived his attack. He is trying to atone for his mass murder by giving the buggers a second chance and by devoting his life to truth and understanding instead of to fear and violence. In doing these things, he is brought to Lusitania, where another alien life form has been found. The humans call them piggies because they sort of resemble pigs, but they are sentient, ethical, and even spiritual. The book revolves around the xenological (like anthrolopology, but not focused on humans; instead focused on other species) project that has been established on Lusitania and a series of cultural misunderstandings that lead to death and the threat of more death. Ender is in a unique position to be able to short circuit the logic of fear and retaliation and to create instead a place where "Human and pig and hive queen, here on Lusitania, will be one. All humans. All buggers. All piggies" (335).
The attempt to create this planet where three different species can coexist points to the necessity for understanding the Other and to the only way this understanding can occur. As Human, one of the piggies, says, "You humans grow by making us part of you, humans and piggies and buggers, ramen [a term used to designate intelligent life] together. Then we are one tribe, and our greatness is your greatness, and yours is ours" (338). The species must come together as much as possible, but Ender is careful to avoid turning this coming together into a means of anthropomorphizing the piggies or the buggers (or into a means for the piggies or buggers to change the humans into mimicries of them, either). He says,we'll ask them to change enough that we can live with them, and no more. We'll change ourselves only enough that they can bear to live with us. . . . [t]hey are what they are. If you want, they are what God made them. So don't try to remake them in your image. (325-6)
This is a tricky situation, perhaps too difficult to balance and easy to destroy, but we are led to believe that it will be worth it in the end.
In the end, after all, the humans and piggies have developed a relationship with one another. They respect and even love each other. Not only is it true that "when you really know somebody, you can't hate them" (370), but it is also true that knowing someone can lead to loving that someone. As Ender says about his relationship with the hive queen, "I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her" (371).
Speaker for the Dead also builds on the attitudes toward war and violence that are introduced in Ender's Game. In this book, however, the argument is even more explicit. In Ender's Game, we are encouraged to feel that violence is unjustified because of our identification with Ender and our emotional attachment to the child he is, as well as our horror at the fate the buggers meet (though we are less attached to them than to Ender); in Speaker for the Dead, most of the interactions between humans and piggies are restricted by the xenological standard of noninterference and a fear of repeating the mistakes of the past with this new alien species. Even more explicit than this, however, is Ender's statement near the end of the novel that "[t]here are worse reasons to die . . . than to die because you cannot bear to kill" (378). In this statement we are finally provided a strong counterargument to the militarism and survivalism of Ender's Game as this alternative to killing is articulated within an ethical context of respect for the Other (whether another human being or a member of another species) that clearly values individual morality over survival.
Ender, following his destruction of the buggers in Ender's Game has become the Speaker for the Dead and travels the universe looking for a safe world to install the remaining hive queen who survived his attack. He is trying to atone for his mass murder by giving the buggers a second chance and by devoting his life to truth and understanding instead of to fear and violence. In doing these things, he is brought to Lusitania, where another alien life form has been found. The humans call them piggies because they sort of resemble pigs, but they are sentient, ethical, and even spiritual. The book revolves around the xenological (like anthrolopology, but not focused on humans; instead focused on other species) project that has been established on Lusitania and a series of cultural misunderstandings that lead to death and the threat of more death. Ender is in a unique position to be able to short circuit the logic of fear and retaliation and to create instead a place where "Human and pig and hive queen, here on Lusitania, will be one. All humans. All buggers. All piggies" (335).
The attempt to create this planet where three different species can coexist points to the necessity for understanding the Other and to the only way this understanding can occur. As Human, one of the piggies, says, "You humans grow by making us part of you, humans and piggies and buggers, ramen [a term used to designate intelligent life] together. Then we are one tribe, and our greatness is your greatness, and yours is ours" (338). The species must come together as much as possible, but Ender is careful to avoid turning this coming together into a means of anthropomorphizing the piggies or the buggers (or into a means for the piggies or buggers to change the humans into mimicries of them, either). He says,we'll ask them to change enough that we can live with them, and no more. We'll change ourselves only enough that they can bear to live with us. . . . [t]hey are what they are. If you want, they are what God made them. So don't try to remake them in your image. (325-6)
This is a tricky situation, perhaps too difficult to balance and easy to destroy, but we are led to believe that it will be worth it in the end.
In the end, after all, the humans and piggies have developed a relationship with one another. They respect and even love each other. Not only is it true that "when you really know somebody, you can't hate them" (370), but it is also true that knowing someone can lead to loving that someone. As Ender says about his relationship with the hive queen, "I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her" (371).
Speaker for the Dead also builds on the attitudes toward war and violence that are introduced in Ender's Game. In this book, however, the argument is even more explicit. In Ender's Game, we are encouraged to feel that violence is unjustified because of our identification with Ender and our emotional attachment to the child he is, as well as our horror at the fate the buggers meet (though we are less attached to them than to Ender); in Speaker for the Dead, most of the interactions between humans and piggies are restricted by the xenological standard of noninterference and a fear of repeating the mistakes of the past with this new alien species. Even more explicit than this, however, is Ender's statement near the end of the novel that "[t]here are worse reasons to die . . . than to die because you cannot bear to kill" (378). In this statement we are finally provided a strong counterargument to the militarism and survivalism of Ender's Game as this alternative to killing is articulated within an ethical context of respect for the Other (whether another human being or a member of another species) that clearly values individual morality over survival.