(no subject)
I recently came across this essay, Creating the Innocent Killer by John Kessel, which is a really intriguing discussion of some of the ethical problems in and with Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.
Like a lot of other people I know, I once loved the Ender series, but, rightly or wrongly, I began to like it less when I heard about Card’s extreme right-wing politics. There are conservative writers that I like and admire, either because they can explain their views through reasonable argument, or just because their writing is interesting. After all, it would be a boring world if we all had the same opinions.
But my reaction to Card’s political essays was more than disagreement. The things he said seemed so cruel-and, almost worse, so stupid-that I had to struggle to keep my long-held faith in the New Critical idea that anything outside the text of is irrelevant.
After reading this essay, I think part of the reason Card’s views made me so angry is that they aren’t entirely outside the text. The characters who desperately need to have babies even though they’re teenagers in the middle of a war zone, the focus on nationalism in the futuristic politics, the disproportionate numbers of gay characters in marriages of convenience, the violence, the obsessive focus on marriage as the only reasonable life goal-all of this made me deeply uncomfortable when reading. Card has such an unbelievable gift, but I find his stories stifled time and time again by the intrusion of his distorted views on morality.
I agree with Kessel, who argues that Ender’s Game presents the morally reprehensible idea that one can consciously exterminate an entire species and still be considered innocent. But, since it’s been a while since I’ve read any Card, I’m not sure how much of my agreement comes from the memory of how sad and vaguely betrayed I felt when I stopped reading his books.
What do you guys think?
Like a lot of other people I know, I once loved the Ender series, but, rightly or wrongly, I began to like it less when I heard about Card’s extreme right-wing politics. There are conservative writers that I like and admire, either because they can explain their views through reasonable argument, or just because their writing is interesting. After all, it would be a boring world if we all had the same opinions.
But my reaction to Card’s political essays was more than disagreement. The things he said seemed so cruel-and, almost worse, so stupid-that I had to struggle to keep my long-held faith in the New Critical idea that anything outside the text of is irrelevant.
After reading this essay, I think part of the reason Card’s views made me so angry is that they aren’t entirely outside the text. The characters who desperately need to have babies even though they’re teenagers in the middle of a war zone, the focus on nationalism in the futuristic politics, the disproportionate numbers of gay characters in marriages of convenience, the violence, the obsessive focus on marriage as the only reasonable life goal-all of this made me deeply uncomfortable when reading. Card has such an unbelievable gift, but I find his stories stifled time and time again by the intrusion of his distorted views on morality.
I agree with Kessel, who argues that Ender’s Game presents the morally reprehensible idea that one can consciously exterminate an entire species and still be considered innocent. But, since it’s been a while since I’ve read any Card, I’m not sure how much of my agreement comes from the memory of how sad and vaguely betrayed I felt when I stopped reading his books.
What do you guys think?