posted
Every time I read the Speaker series, I always get a bit confused about things. When I think of Ender and Peter and Valentine, I see all three of them as intellectually equal. People (namely Jane, Peter, and Val) seem to act like Peter is the smartest and strongest of the three, but just has a little mean streak. While Ender is sort of an average. And Val is less smart, less strong, but much more empathetic than either.
In my view though, Ender is greater than both Val and Peter. I think Ender could have easily taken over Earth and ruled as Hegemon. I don't understand why, it seems to me at least, all the people in the book treat Peter as if he were much smarter than Ender. I always viewed Ender as superior in pretty much every way, and Val and Peter to being just as smart as each other, just having opposing personalities. Am I wrong?
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posted
I always saw Ender as being smarter than Peter too, but I don't think Ender could ever be Hegemon...I really don't think he has it in him, not to say he is weak, but I think Ender deals well more with philosophical and personal issues. I think that Peter is a born politician, and that's why he became Hegemon. He's perfect as Hegemon. I totally agree with you on Valentine, but at the same time, I feel like she's a pretty strong person...and I agree that she's more empathetic than either Peter or Ender, although Ender seems very empathetic too, but in a different way. Valentine seems to be one of those tragic characters to me, very melancholy, while Ender seems to form very close and intimate personal relationships....just my thoughts, but i'm rambling now and probably not making much sense Posts: 124 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
In the shadow series, I think it becomes clear that Peter is the most aggresive, Valentine is the most articulate, and Ender is both.
Ender is also the most insightful human being alive, or at least one surmises from his treatment in the later books. Peter the child of the mind benefits from this insight, and gains the agressivity of the original Peter as well. That is why he is going to be a fascinating character in the next book!
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posted
I think all three (Peter, Valintine, & Ender) are extreme geniuses. Genius at a level that most of us can't even comprehend. But they are three very different people. In a sense, there is no reason to assume all geniuses are alike any more than it is to think that these three individual are alike.
One important point to consider when contemplating the fate of these individuals. Peter and Valintine grew up in something approximating a normal environment. They lived at home. They had the green and beautiful hills of Greensboro, North Carolina to wander. Ender was trapped in battle school and somewhat isolated. He didn't get the latest earth news. He didn't get to contact his family. He didn't get to wander the hills. His life was the tortured life of endless battles that came far ahead of time and grew progressively more unfair.
So, in some sense, Ender has no model for a 'normal life', he has no idea how 'normal people' interact. At Battle School he was first isolated by being different. Later he was isolated by being a commander. He never really had any friends, though those under his command considered Bean more of his friend than anyone else.
That level of warped life can only leave a person warped. Then to compound that, Ender carried the guilt of the Xenocide with him for over 3,000 years. To some extent, he carried that guilt to his grave, though he did have the peace of knowing that he had restored the Hive Queen, and allowed her family to grow and populate the stars. That was certainly some satisfaction, and perhaps even a little penance.
Even when Ender found some degree of peace in his marriage to Novinha, it was a warped sense of peace. I think what brought them together, was the fact that they both had deep dark secrets, and they both carried a crushing burden of guilt. So, even in the best of circumstances, Ender was doomed to never have a normal life.
Peter and Valintine at least had a chance at a normal life. Peter probably came closest to achieving this, but Valintine did marry and seems to have had a good relationship with her husband, and seems to have had loving well adjusted kids.
Each is carrying some degree of burden that has influenced how they lived their lives. Each has achieved great things in their life. Peter brought peace to a warring earth that hadn't seen peace since man first appear, but he carried the burden of his earlier life, always wondering if that was his true self. Valintine had her writing, that is a somewhat quiet achievement, but it seems her histories were brilliant and well received, but she was torn between her two brothers. Helping Peter felt like a betrayal of Ender. Futher, she dedicated a substantial portion of her life to taking care of Ender, and that is certainly to be commended. Ender himself, has many great acheivements; he won the war, he ruled a colony, he spoke for the dead, he wrote books that to an extent changed the world and still influenced it 3,000 years later, he healed a tragically broken family. He loved a woman, who didn't think she could love or be loved. And, he made mistakes, but the good far outweighed those mistakes.
So, what I'm saying is that I don't think it is far to compare the three. Peter's actions were certain to be in a public arena, and were certain to get the most notice. Ender's achievements were much quieter and more behind the scenes. Very few knew about his greatest achievements. In her own unique way, Valintine made huge contributions.
Each person is very unique and very brilliant in their own way, and that should be enough.
I am extremely curious about New!Peter. He seems to be a combination of all the best aspect. He has original!Peter's sense of how to act on the public stage. He has Ender's deep intutitive sense. I think Si Wang-mu softens New!Peter the way Valintine softened Ender. He seems to be the best of all worlds, and I am immensely interested in his continuing story.
[SPOILER Paragraph] Probably the most unique thing about New!Peter is that he is really Ender combined with Enders projection of Peter. New!Peter is made alive by receiving Ender's soul, so on some deep level, he really is Ender, but Ender in a way that he is allowed the life and the success that Ender was denied. It's going to be an interesting story.
Last note; you really should read the short stories in 'First Meetings in the Enderverse', because they explain a lot of things. John Paul, Ender's father, was a brilliant as any of his kids, in fact problable more brilliant than any of them. Ender's mother was also brilliant and was the daughter of a military commander who wrote the book that was the foundation of the operation of the Interstellar Fleet. However, this doesn't come out in the Ender and Shadow books because, do to circumstane explained in 'First Meetings', they were forced to hide who they were. They were in a sense force to be 'ordindary' for the sake of their kids. Once you read these short stories, the source of the level of brilliance of Ender, Valintine, and Peter becomes obvious.
posted
Yeah I read that a while back so I knew they weren't slouches. Also, you can glean that from the Shadow series in that they knew about Peter all the time and, in some ways, manipulated him and guided him throughout the trouble. I just wondered if others viewed them in that light. I think Ender easily could take over the entire galaxy if he wanted to. He doesn't, but if he did it would be cake. He has that power, that ability to have people love him more than anything just by being him. He's a wonderkid.
***Children Of The Mind Spoiler***
Also, what you mentioned about New!Peter, that's another question of mind. New!Peter, after Children of the Mind, IS Ender isn't he? Isn't Ender's aiua, his whole one, controlling New!Peter. "Ender", or at least his body, died and "Val" transfered over to New!Peter, which would give New!Peter 3/3 of Ender's aiua. So isn't New!Peter basically Ender? I love saying that. New!Peter.
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posted
AKhockey Also, what you mentioned about New!Peter, that's another question of mind. New!Peter, after Children of the Mind, IS Ender isn't he? Isn't Ender's aiua, his whole one, controlling New!Peter. "Ender", or at least his body, died and "Val" transfered over to New!Peter, which would give New!Peter 3/3 of Ender's aiua. So isn't New!Peter basically Ender? I love saying that. New!Peter.
Yes, but when Ender created Peter, he gave New!Peter a very specific set of memories and a personality traits dictated by Ender's impression of original!Peter. While that has been moderated or softened by gaining the essense of Val and Ender, and by meeting Wang-mu, that conscious creation of Ender's creates the foundation for New!Peter's self-awareness and personality.
To put it another way, as of the end of the story, New!Peter does not have all the knowledge, insight, and information that Ender accumulated throughout his life. So, in that sense, he is not Ender. But you are absolutely right, deep down New!Peter's source of enlightened life is Ender's soul (aiua). Ender lives again in New!Peter; think of it as reincarnation.
posted
I think he is Ender in his 'soul of souls' but he also has to have something of the original Peter in his character as a person, because he was created as an image of Peter that Ender carried in his mind (so it's not the true Peter either, only someone that THINKS he is, and probably has his ambition and some other traits, but at the same time, because of being really Ender, he hates himself for being as Ender thought he was. Phew, pretty complicated. And sad for the New Peter as well, I think).
I think Ender has all the intellectual potential to rule the world, but the very thought of him ever THINKING of doing it is so bizarre... It would be completely against his character to want to have such power. Indeed, when I think of Ender and what he would have to be like to want it, then what I see is Peter!
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posted
Agreed. With both. The thing I like best about New!Peter is that, like it was said in CotM, he is *basically* Ender getting the chance to live a "normal" life. Obviously, since he has Ender's aiua, he's too ambitious to not meddle in the most important events of the time. However, he will have the chance to live a relatively normal life. He won't have to deal with the slaying of an entire sentient species. Which is cool. I can't wait for the next book, though, to see how he pans out.
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Peter is the Wiggin with unchecked ambition. He knows what he wants and does not care what he needs to do to get it.
Valentine is the Wiggin with the heart of gold. She knows what she wants, but will not harm others to get it.
So now, who is Ender. Ender is the best qualities of Peter, ruthless when he needs to be, but possessing Valentine's heart of gold. He is the synergy of Peter and Val. He has ALL of Peter's ruthlessness and ambition, and ALL of Valentine's empathy and love. This is one of the main underlying themes in Ender's Game. All three Wiggin children are equally smart, it is personality that sets them apart, and why Ender is chosen to command the human fleets. Ender is the greatest of the Wiggins. Not because he is the smartest, but becuase he contains all the strengths of Peter and Val. This thread gets answered with Occam's Razor. There is no need to overanalyze. The reason that Ender and Valentine talk of Peter as the strongest of the three is becuase they remember 12 year old Peter, who could hurt Ender or Valentine at will, and really was smarter at that time. There is nothing deeper too this. Ender as a charecter is Valentine and Peter. The classic battle in Ender's Game is that Ender has to come to grips with the fact that although the sibling he loves, Valentine, makes up one half of personality, the other half, that part that gives him the strength to be the great commander and leader he becomes, the part that completes him, is Peter, the brother he hates. He despise that part of himself. He says he is not Peter, but when he has to be, he is every bit as ruthless, maybe more so, than Peter. Ender has always wished he could get rid of the side of him that is Peter, but he never could. This is one of the literary layers of meaning in this work, if I am overstating this, I am sorry, but it seems that in this posts, no one is remembering this. Val and Peter are in the original book to create the powerful emotional substory that made Ender's Game the great novel it was. He is a tormented, empathic young man, he in one moment is so ruthless he kills a young man, and in the next moment, is so empathetic, it cripples him. It is his constant battle, he hates the half of him that is Peter.
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ender's aiua is in new!peter's body as a whole. once the 3/3 of ender's aiua were brought together, didnt peter say felt a sense of peace? less of a compulsion to act on the traits ender viewed old peter to be (brutal, ruthless, tactless)? wasn't there also a part where new!peter was supressing ender's memories (i think he chose not to because he didnt want to live with the burden of xenocide, etc)?
most of the time when i mention this to friends it's taken as that i'm trying to find ender's character again.. of course i'm going to miss ender in future books. but how does this effect new!peter? there has to be plenty of moments that he will supress other memories. does he get butterflies at the site of novinah? does he feel the same affection toward the hivequeen? does the hive queen feel close to him?
it seems that some clarification should be made in the next book or future books. (does anyone else feel that there would be more than one book? i could only assume that shadows in flight would deal with new!peter overthrowing starways congress and uniting world after world but also have the compassion to unite all sentient species. not to mention the descolada planet and all remaining characters from the shadow series and their unsolved problems [which i like to speculate to be solved with almost the same solution]. to cram all of this into one book seems a bit far fetched unless it was a bit longer than xenocide.) i dont think i'm alone in the sense that ender's character is still on a lot of people's minds. this being stated despite the fact that there are all sorts of new characters that can carry the spirit (no pun intended) of who ender was and could accomplish (i couldn't begin to express my excitement over bean's children.) i guess this jumbled mess of words of mine is stated to simply say that ender's aiua being in the new!peter body has to be a bit more significant to the story than i can imagine right now.
One thing that bothers me, though: how is Peter the child different from Peter the adult (I mean in EG and the Shadow series, not the New Peter) as far as his ambition is concerned? I mean, in EG he seems to be simply overambitious, but in the Shadow series I get the impression that most of his ambition is in fact a hidden inferiority complex. Then again, in EG there already ARE some signs of Peter feeling "worse" and "unloved" because of Ender. As an adult, he seems to be at the same time less ruthless than he used to be (I haven't read the last part, so maybe I'm missing something) and more hurt in his soul, which makes him more human and less 'powerful' than in EG. Or maybe it was just his adolescence period that made him so? Anyway, I'd like to read something about Peter's first reaction to Ender's victory and what impact it had on him.
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posted
Peter, Val and Ender remind me of a story I learned back in Yeshiva.
A midrash (Jewish moral story) describes how our world is actually the third of God's creations. First, He created a world ruled entirely by the attribute of justice - it failed, because people would be punished harshly for every crime, mistake and accident. If a man blinded another, he would have his own eye put out, etc.. The results were catastrophic - with everybody ending up injured by the strict justice. The human race could not survive under such conditions.
So God destroyed that world and created another, this time ruled entirely by the attribute of mercy. This world also failed, because nobody was punished for any wrongdoings. If a man blinded another, he was always forgiven. The results were equally catastrophic - people were literally getting away with murder. The human race could not survive under such conditions.
So God destroyed that second world and proceded to create a third world, this one ruled by both justice and mercy, in equal measure. If a man blinded another, he would be required to pay reparations to the injured party - he would not lose his own eye, nor would he go unpunished. The human race could thrive under this sytem, and it did. God chose to keep this third world, which is the one we live in today.
I see this same story in the characters of Peter, Valentine and Ender. Peter is a person whose personality is intitially ruled entirely by justice. Val is a person whose personality is initially rule entirely by mercy. Both are important, but neither can, by itself, produce a great leader. Ender's personality contains both justice and mercy, allowing him to be the kind of leader the world needed.
This theme continues after Ender leaves for Battle School. When Peter and Val assume the characters of Demosthenes and Locke - forcing themselves to take on aspects of the others' persona - each grows into a more complete human being. By adding justice to mercy, Val ends up a strong person, able to fend for herself. By adding mercy to justice, Peter's cruel streak is tempered, allowing him to become a real leader and not a petty tyrant.
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posted
Oolung: Great observation. I don't think this observation has an easy answer. Peter is different in the Shadow Series. He is portrayed as a human being. His driving force is to do something that was worthwhile in its own right, to be judged as Peter Wiggin only, not Peter Wiggin, Enders Brother. Bean is not the only one in Ender's figurative shadow, Peter is. As far as why the character seems less ambitious, and more "human" in the Shadow series, may simply be becuase they are two different books, two different series. In Ender's Game, Peter Wiggin exists to show us the ruthless side of Ender. The character needs some development, but not much. In the Shadow series, Peter Wiggin has a much bigger role to play, Bean, Petra and Peter carry that series as characters. The result is a more fully developed Peter Wiggin. One who gets a full personality. Secondly, in Ender's Game, our vision of Peter is from Ender's view point. Ender doesn't see the good in Peter until he writes the Hegemon. Even then, Ender never truly comes to love Peter. That is a contradiction in Ender. He loves everyone, even his enemies, but he never comes to love Peter. Maybe, maybe he comes to respect him at some point. In conclusion, I would say that even in Ender's Game, there are signs that Peter Wiggin is not the monster Ender says he is. Take the scene when Ender loses his monitor, and Peter tells him that he loves him, and he is his brother. Peter is shown to be capable of love, of humanity at certain points. The real reason we see a different Peter in Shadows is becuase Orson Scott Card writes the character from a different perspective.
Secondly
New!Peter. At the end of Children of the Mind, he is once again Ender's full aiua. This does not in any way mean that he will be Ender. One of the tougher points to understand about the aiua is that it rules the body, but the personality is still developed individually. New!Peter will be an individual. He will forge his own personality and be his own person. Wang Mu tried to make this point to him at the end of Xenocide when she throws the bee at him and asks him if Ender, on Lusitania, made him dodge that and get angry. Ender may have split his aiua, and made New!Peter the ruthless, aggressive individual that he remember, but the human was an individual, with its own freewill. We are not buggers. Ender's aiua may have held three patterns, but Val and New!Peter were never his drones. In the end, New!Peter will not be Ender, he will simply have his memories. He will be his own person, a human.
Finally, David C, well said. Simple and concise and accurate.
posted
I would just like to say that the characters of Peter, Val, and Ender are geniouses but somone had to create them and inthis case it was OSC and it's easy to write about someone dumber than yourself but it's nearly impossible to write about someone smarter so... we come to the conclusion that Osc must be INCREDIBLY smart.
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posted
A quote from Doh: Take the scene when Ender loses his monitor, and Peter tells him that he loves him, and he is his brother. Peter is shown to be capable of love, of humanity at certain points.
To me that's one of the strangest moments with Peter. The way he's portrayed throughout EG, I can't help but wonder how true what he said at that moment was. It certainly seems true, but then in EG you can expect almost everything from Peter, don't you That's what makes this character so wonderfully complex and mysterious (in EG - in the Shadow series he's much easier to understand, probably because OSC writes about him, not his wizzkid of a brother,heheh).
I like your observations, but I can't agree with the notion that Ender wasn't able to love Peter. I think he perfectly well was (and did), but Peter was such a dominating figure in his life that Ender's fear (of Peter and of becoming like him) was stronger than his love. He wanted Peter to love him (he said so to Val) and I doubt if he'd feel like that if he didn't love him himself. In a way it's like a relation of a child with an abusive parent. The child can hide from the parent, try not to be like like the parent, but in the end it simply wants acceptance.
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posted
Didn't Michael Jordan try to play baseball? And he wasn't very good at it, but he was still an amazing athelete. He couldn't be who he wasn't. As an athelete could you compare him to Jason Veritek? Not really. A great runner might be able to play baseball and basketball, but she is still a runner. I don't know, they are bound by who they are.
(This makes sense in my head.)
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posted
a thought that i've been having.. what determines which memories peter has retained of ender's? peter wasn't even aware that he could manuver as ender could in null g until he was aboard the ship with the dr. device. where is it set in stone that peter has only the memories ender created him with? it seems new!peter draws from the memories at an instinctual or reflexive level more than anything.
what keeps new!peter from taking ender's identity (aside from the fact that ender was tired and old and had no strong interest in his own life)? is it a combination of peter's ambition and ender's lack of interest that keeps peter as himself?
how did jane retain her identity in the val body?
i apologize that my posts arent often well thought out.. i guess if i dont type them as they are then i'd never type them at all.
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posted
Peter 2.0 didn't have Ender's memories, he had a scattering of what Ender thought a "Peter" might have, like Shakespeare and the Wizard of Oz. He didn't have any memories from Ender's viewpoint, the personal ones.
Instead what he had was more of Ender's abilities rather than his personality.
That explains the maneuvering in null g and why he was surprised to spring up so quickly after lying down. I agree with you that it is instinctive, by reflex, but I don't think it has anything to do with memory. More habit. Does that make sense?
The Jane issue you bring up is a very interesting one. How did Jane retain her memories when she switched bodies? It was only her aiua that moved, right?
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posted
CRash The Jane issue you bring up is a very interesting one. How did Jane retain her memories when she switched bodies? It was only her aiua that moved, right?
You can't deny that Jane is a very unique case. Despite now having a body, Jane is still connected to the Ansible Network which is where she lived most of her life and created most of her memories. So, while she is not connected to a 'new body', she has never been truly disconnected from her old body. Meaning, durning the time between when she became connected to her physical body, and while she was mostly disconnected from the Ansible Network.
True she did use some computers, the Buggers, and the network of Piggy Trees to store herself when the Ansibles were shut down, but in doing so was not only able to preserve her soul/auia but was able to preserve her 'Self'. It is that 'self', that conscious full aware all knowing Self, that allows her to retain all her knowledge and memories, and later bring that to her physical body.
To the original point, while Ender's Auia/soul is transferred completely to Peter, Ender's 'Self' is not transferred. I think some of Ender on a very deep intuitive level, and perhaps even with a few stray memories, were transferred. Remember the memories that Peter has were given to him by Ender. But Ender as we knew him is gone; he is dead.
I think at certain times New!Peter will be able to draw on certain aspects of Ender, but again they will be in a subconscious and intuitive way, similar to the way he understood how to manuver in Nullo-Gravity. But, true-Ender will never resurface again.
As to the softening and mellowing of New!Peter. Auia/souls don't retain direct memory, or in this example I will say physical memories, but they do retain Spiritual memory. In Ender's life, he has grown spiritually, he has learned things, he has gained knowledge and wisdom, and on a spiritual level, that knowledge and wisdom are carried by Ender soul and brought forward to New!Peter.
I think when New!Peter sees the mess of a person Ender has created for him, he is horrified at how flawed and incomplete Ender's vision of him was. When New!Peter is off visiting worlds with Si Wang-Mu, he is well aware of how pathetically inadequate the personality Ender has given him is, and he knows he needs to change it.
So, when the parts of Ender's soul that are in Ender and Val join the soul piece that is in New!Peter, while they do not bring intellectual knowledge and memories, they do bring a great deal of spiritual knowledge and wisdom. These are the things that New!Peter needs to mellow him, and his comments seem to indicate that he is aware of and at peace with the new spritual peace.
Further, I think Si Wang-Mu is very important to New!Peter, she is also a mellowing and enlightening influence on him, and I think Peter finds strenth in that. I think he knows as they travel the Galaxy on their future adventures, Wang-mu can be the moderating influence he needs to keep him on the straight and narrow.
Plus, New!Peter is in love. He will spend his whole adult life in the love (physical, spiritual, and romantic) of another person, and will do so in a way that neither Peter nor Ender were ever allowed.
Peter now has the chance to be the Ender that neither Ender, nor Peter, nor Val could ever be.
quote:The Jane issue you bring up is a very interesting one. How did Jane retain her memories when she switched bodies? It was only her aiua that moved, right?
And that brings up some interesting questions on how the Father Trees retained their memories from when they were piggies.
Are memories more than just the network of neural connections in the brain?
Can memories be translated into another "language" made up of different physical components?
Is it possible for the properties of an aiua to be used to store or transfer a "memory signature" long enough for it to later be translated and stored onto another type of physical media?
Added: We know that the Father Trees do not have "brains" like the piggies and humans, so obviously their memories would have to be stored on a different type of media or in a different format. That means that yes, memories can be translated into different formats. So how are their memories transfered to that new media? Something has to be responsible for that translation.
We know that particle waves contain a great deal of information. I don't see why an aiua, more specifically the properties of an aiua, couldn't contain information as well. Those properties could later be interpreted (much like binary or DNA) and saved to a new media. So, the aiua wouldn't have the ability to understand or translate the memories itself, but it could serve as a way of transfering them to something else that is capable of understanding them.
posted
i think there's a point i've been overlooking:
do we all remember the chapter in cotm - "you called me back from darkness?"
peter could remember sleeping with a woman curled up against him but he never had been with wang-mu in that way. it seems when he pondered how much of ender really was within him.. that's when he started to slip away.
when he began to look further into himself, and finding bits of ender, he felt himself fading. by proof of jane's aiua holding her memories in jane's body, it could be possible for peter to be ender. but if that were to ever happen, even remotely, peter would die and ender's aiua would return Outside.
i think it's plain to say that ender's aiua is tired and worn. just like peter and val had to keep ender's interest, or else they would fade to dust, peter must remain, always, himself or he will die. of course, as we've mentioned in this thread, peter does have the memories that ender supplied him with at his time of creation and the memories that he can discover at a reflexsive level. of course these memories would be "safe" to remember because they are relevant to his own existence and would not fall into ender's tired being.
i do suppose that peter having the memory of being close to a woman could have something to do with the memories ender supplied for him.. but i dont see how that would be important enough of a memory to give to peter... it plays not even a small part of peter's character. especially a young man that ender created with such ill-desires.
i would also like to quote something from "the god whispers" it appears at chapter 7 "i offer her this poor old vessel"
how do we remember? is the brain a jar that holds our memories? then when we die, does the jar break? are our memories spilled on the ground and lost? or is the brain a map that leads down twisted paths and into hidden corners? then when we die, the map is lost but perhaps some explorer could wander through that strange landscape and find our hiding places of our misplaced memories.
i'm trying to figure out what this holds relevance to.. any insight?
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posted
oh, and about the father trees.. perhaps it has something to do with the decomposition of their second life bodies? i know it's stated somewhere that the fathertrees do have the same dna as they did in the second life.. but i'm not sure what that would have to do with memory.
other than the fact that these trees are actually sentient... what makes them different than other trees? where could memory be stored?
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jane's self wasnt contained (ie, her memories) in the mothertrees, hivequeen, and the ansible. all computers had been disconnected and jane's "self memory" wouldnt be restored until all new computers were back online and then the old computers on divine wind and other allied planets were restored so she could access the new systems. she had only a sense (not even a thought or memory) of confusion at being in all of ender's bodies. when she was in the mothertrees she simply felt nurtured and felt the vastness of the forest (which was said to be "not enough" by the hivequeen). there was no point of her old "body" that was of access to her at the time of her aiua leaping and dancing about with ender's.
you explanation was perfect, honestly, and i'm only disapointed now that i have to reconsider all of it. i was put to rest on the subject matter and now i'm here scratching my head again.
i can only be lead to believe that there has to be a trait of dominance somewhere between aiua, body, and mind. in the case of jane, her aiua hungered to live where the val body was useless in body and mind. in the case of peter, the body and mind longed to live but required an aiua to do so. believing that ender's aiua was/is tired and more submissive to fate could explain how peter can hold ender's aiua and still be himself.
another explanation could be that ender, new!val, and new!peter were all the same person being controlled by one aiua (like the hivequeen does but instead of workers they are just two people with seemingly free will). ender's aiua transfering entirely to peter could simply mean that ender's aiua is inside a smaller (but not less capable) form of himself and taking the only available personality.
i dont know.. i'm starting to confuse the hell out of myself.
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but he also has to have something of the original Peter in his character as a person, because he was created as an image of Peter that Ender carried in his mind (so it's not the true Peter either, only someone that THINKS he is, and probably has his ambition and some other traits, but at the same time, because of being really Ender, he hates himself for being as Ender thought he was. Phew, pretty complicated. And sad for the New Peter as well, I think). ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Anyway, I'd like to read something about Peter's first reaction to Ender's victory and what impact it had on him.
