posted
hey everyone in the forum I'm new here i'm 16 and live in sydney and am inviting you to take part in my interest study project! i think this forum is great i've only been on for a couple of days
NOTE: i will be printing out the webpage so if you dont want your post published please notify me
ok lets get started..
name? (its ok if you dont want to tell me) age? location? faith?
and finally your thoughts on
HOW OSC EXAMINES RELIGION IN THE ENDER/SHADOW SAGA?
i really would love (from the bottom of my heart) alot of feeback so thanks alot for everyone who posts!
posted
name? Anna age? 14 location? Baltimore faith? atheist
and finally your thoughts on
HOW OSC EXAMINES RELIGION IN THE ENDER/SHADOW SAGA?
it seems to me that OSC generally tries to keep his religious life seperate from his novel-writing life. lots of people in his books are religious, which is to be expected, since it's very much a part of his life. but i'm skeptical about how much of his actual religious believes affect (effect?) his novels. i don't know. i know next to nothing about Mormonism (other then they don't drink, they're from Utah, and they don't get baptised until they're eight). so i might be completely wrong. but that's my gut feeling.
one trend seems to be that his main characters aren't big on religion, but there are strongly religious people that are very close to them, and influencing them. Bean didn't think much of God, but Carlotta was constantly trying to convert him... Bean was probably uncomfortable with the fact that he was created, not born, and thought that that excluded him from 'God loves everybody,' despite how much Carlotta told him that was wrong... so he felt uncomforable with religion in general. *shrugs* just my inference.
Ender's parents were both religious, and though Ender never outwardly expressed any religious thoughts or believes, he didn't seem too hesitant to accept Novinha's creed. to me, he never seemed quite happy with his title as 'infedel' on Lusitania. i don't know. didn't he adopt Catholicism in the end? *can't remember*
Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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gosh i onli got one reply! but i still appreciate it. i agree with ure comments and have even gone back to read ender's game a 2nd time
um..if anyone else has other comments about religion on any of OSC books PLEASE POST A COMMENT i would realli truly b thankful...
Posts: 5 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Name- Eric Age- 14, same as anna religion- christian
OSC makes some very interesting points in religion. i liked how he changed the muslim point-of-view by making it futuristic. it intrigued me to see him write it that way.
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Name: Ricky Age: 16 Location: Omaha, NE Religion: Borderline Agnostic|Atheist Thoughts on how OSC examines religion: I don't care to type a thirty page thesis, honestly.
Welcome to the site, by the by, and enjoy.
Posts: 40 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
oh i didn't think anyone thought i was shouting.. I've actually already done my assignment its not due for another week and i've given a draft to my teacher to look at and i told her about the forum.
she just thought it was a good idea to see what other people thought to add to my bibliography because i needed various sources. I wasn't going to use anyones responses because i would go over my word limit.
sorry if i offended anyone or caused them to resent me because that wasn't my intention.
The name and age and location and faith questions i thought were necessary to see perhaps were you're own views on the subject came from (even if they may have not affected your perspectives). So sorry again and thanks for the welcome.
posted
Don't worry about it; yes, you should try to use lower case, but apparently you didn't know and therefore it is merely an easily corrected mistake, which everyone makes. And secondly, not everyone thought you were trying to get others to do your work.
Locale: Logan, Utah, illustrious and cold home of Utah State University.
Name: Whittney
Age: 19
Faith: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Also known as LDS or Mormon. So yes, since I was raised in the same faith Card was, my religious background likely influences the religion I see in his work.
The first thing I do notice is that it isn't as if he focuses on one religion in his writing. He has characters across the board, from highly involved in a variety of different religions to agnostic and atheist. True, much of his work has biblical references; and yet more often than not these references are told as stories explaining human history, such as Kemal discovering Atlantis through Noah in Pastwatch. Religion is present, is used to make a point in Card's works, but isn't overwhelming, at least to me. Unless, of course, you go to those novels of his where the religion has to be at least part of the basis for the novel: Stone Tables, Saints, and the Women of Genesis series in particular. I notice mostly little things; like the idea of an infinite number of galaxies, in Xenocide, is a well-known science fiction idea but is also something I know that is believed by Mormons, that there are many worlds created by God. Whether that had an effect on the way Card wrote that part of the story, I have no idea. The last thing that hits me so strongly that it almost has to be intentional (but you never know) is the similarity of Alvin Maker to Joseph Smith, first prophet of the Mormon church.
Joseph: had a leg operation as a child in which he refused alcohol and said he would be fine as long as his father held him, saw a vision as a young man that shaped his life, married a woman slightly older than he was, had an older brother he loved dearly, was named after his father, is remember as joking, having a sense of humor, had a gold item that had first 3 (one of whom was named Martin, the same name as the third witness of Alvin's golden plow) and then 8 witnesses, was often in jail and on trial for crimes he didn't commit, died in Carthage as Margaret has warned Alvin he will do . . . and perhaps the most significant to me is that Joseph Smith had a younger brother who died as a child. That brother's name?
I'm really not to sure. I feel that he has personal views on religions that differ from one to another but I think that he tries not to encorperate it to much into his novels except to make a character more realistic. But then, I've never really thought about that before. Welcome.
Posts: 112 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Blayne Bradley 17 Quebec, Cananda, Rigaud, North America (just above the United States) I don't really have a faith, I more of an agnostic than anything else. Like there could be a god for which ever religion but they're may not be one.
To answer your question I must say that the religion he uses is more of a writing tool to add meaning to his work. It is a nice touch it helps to add content and form to the stories. After all we can't all be Asimov's. Using just logic and science as the theme of our works. I don't think he is so overly religious that he'll try to convert us heathens with his work.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Name: Anne Age: 21 Location: Richardson, TX Religion: Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, AKA Mormon; convert, raised Presbyterian by a mother who was raised Baptist; also exposed to beliefs of my father, who identifies himself as Catholic, my aunt and uncle, practicing Catholics, and worked at a Catholic school for two years. So, LDS but not raised LDS, and I've got a lot of different background.
Thoughts:
One thing I really noticed, as a Latter-day Saint, in reading these books, is that the thoughts expressed by Catholic Carlotta are thoughts I've never heard a Catholic articulate. There are even points where it's mentioned what she's thinking/saying is not by the book according to Catholisism; however, it's very much like things I've heard in LDS Sunday School classes, General Conference talks, etc. from educated and intelligent people, and they resonate very much with my beliefs. Anton also says things about family, etc. that are very much an elaboration on the views of the Church on the family (i.e., one of the main purposes of life on this earth is to have children and take care of them, homosexual men should try to sublimate their desires in a legitimate heterosexual union). I've noticed this in other books, too. Faith is a big theme, although not always faith in God per se. It may not be expressed within the context of LDS characters speaking, but the ideas that end up expressed are shaped by an LDS worldview. He just uses whatever character he can legitimately have speak from faith or experience express these views, whether it's what I think a person who is legitimately from that background would think and say or not.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
really, there's no point in answering the first four questions if you're not going to answer the fifth. Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Hi -- I know this thread's a little old but I'm new here and wanted to do an introduction and I'm also very interested in this topic. I'm Christie, 46 years old, (and I think OSC is older than me because he got his bachelor's degree the year before I graduated from high school). I'm a Protestant and very intensely intrested in religion and religious differences. I'm currently reading _Xenocide_ and although I don't know much about Mormonism, I think it has some Mormon content -- what's this about people's souls (is that the word he uses?) being eternally existent? And at one point someone -- I think Wang Mu -- refers to other people as gods, if they try to help other people be better. Someone mentioned they thought OSC did not see himself as a Protestant, but I believe I've seen him refer to himself as such -- he referred to Ender's mother as a lapsed Mormon and a Protestant and I think in some essay he called himself a Protestant. Anyway I just discovered OSC in August and I've been reading him madly since reading _Rebecca_. Hope to learn more as time goes on. Christie
Posts: 24 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Well weather or not Mormons are considered Protestant or not depends on the diffenition of a Protestant. Some people say all christian religions other then the Catholic are protestant, and then some say only those that broke off the Catholic church becaues they disagreed with a spicific teaching(s) of the Catholic church are protestant.
The Mormon Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) is a christian church that belives that thier church is the same church that Christ organized on the earth during his life but was destroyed 1 or 2 hundred years after that and it was restored by Christ and angels in the early to mid-1800's, and is led today by Prophets who communicate with God. So they don't consider them selves as a break off of the Catholic church. And yes the Eternal Nature of Souls is one of the beliefs of Mormons but the way it was portrayed in the Ender Books is only based on that belief at best, but dosen't represent the actual doctrine precisly.
Posts: 147 | Registered: Aug 2003
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i didn't think anyone thought i was shouting.. I've actually already done my assignment its not due for another week and i've given a draft to my teacher to look at and i told her about the forum.![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
