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It has always pained me how the so-called 'Bean Quartet' became less and less about Bean and more and more about Peter Wiggin as the series progressed. At the end of Shadow of the Giant, when OSC apparently forgot about all of his own foreshadowing and the fact that Bean and Petra were geniuses and sent Bean into space for no good reason, it merely seemed like a very unsatisfying and illogical ending, not anything particularly malicious.
But having just finished Xenocide and Children of the Mind, I've come to a different conclusion. After seeing the way that OSC lost interest in Ender towards the end of that series (or rather, had Ender lose interest in himself), I decided that four books was simply too long for him to maintain a serious interest in one central protagonist. But then I thought more about how Card had Ender ultimately donate his life force to the newly formed Peter persona, who had honestly become the most interesting part of the story. It caused me to think about Bean again, and how the departure for his relativistic journey didn't just leave a grieving Petra and her fatherless children, but actually left the door open for Peter (the real Peter this time) to marry Petra and in many ways take over Bean's life. It suddenly occurred to me that Card doesn't hate Bean, and he wasn't bored with Ender; he just loves Peter Wiggin so much that he couldn't bring himself to end either Ender's or Bean's story without Peter coming out on top.
What do you think?
Posts: 11 | Registered: Apr 2011
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posted
I don't know that I agree with you're reasoning on causation, but I think there's no question that Peter is the more interesting character from a literary standpoint. Someone who always does the right thing in every situation, no matter what... well the internal conflict and external suspense take a hit. That's basically what you had with the older Ender. He was dedicated to doing right, smart enough and empathetic enough to know what that meant. Bean kind of became the same "problem" as the Shadow series progressed. He was always very smart of course, but lacked empathy and commitment to moral action [at the beginning].
One of the great things, for me, about OSC novels are that his characters tend to grow (and not just at the end of a story with a sudden reveal of the story's moral, a tactic I find trite and kind of boring but used all the time). The problem is, as many TV series have discovered, if your character grows and learns from their life experience the initial conflict or tension that made them interesting to the reader (and normally also cause the whole story to get going) disappears and your story then either has to end or move on with a different focus. In Ender's case that meant different characters. It doesn't have to mean that, and in TV shows were a lot of audience investment is in the character and the actor portraying them it can't mean that. However, I would agree here that focus shifted and rightfully so. I don't know that it was because OSC just liked Peter more though, maybe from a story perspective.
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A long time ago, I got a hold of OSC email, and wrote him. He wrote back. Nice guy. I asked him if he had a brother, a troublesome brother, as both the Ender series and Homecoming have troublesome brothers, and he said yes he did.
I wonder if the points you are making about liking Peter are a reflection of wanting things to end up good for his real life brother.
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Hobbes, when it comes to Children of the Mind, I definitely see your point and agree with you. Peter is the more interesting character by that point, and as the book is so deliberately left open to future sequels it makes sense to keep him around and allow Ender's story to conclude. There are even additional factors that make it far less of a betrayal than it seems at first glance. First, Card sets up a relatively clear either-or situation for Ender and Peter, with no evident way for both of them to continue existing in the same universe indefinitely. Second, it's strongly suggested that Peter really is, deep down at the core, the same being as Ender; that Ender's central self continues to exist as long as Peter exists. Third, regardless of what the afterlife is like in OSC's universe, this is actually a happy ending for Ender because death has got to better than spending the rest of your life with Novinha. All of that mitigates the situation substantially; I just thought it was odd that both Ender and Bean were set aside for other characters, and in both cases the other character happened to be named Peter Wiggin. Maybe Stone Wolf is right and OSC just really, really wants Peter to succeed deep down.
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One of my biggest disappointments with the Shadow series was that, while we got to see a lot of Peter as I had been hoping, the Peter we saw was not the Peter I was looking forward to seeing. I was hoping for a Mikhail-esque (from Songmaster) character who committed terrible atrocities and yet brought peace to humanity. Peter barely had a dark side in the Shadow series.
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That's true; I hadn't thought of that before. Aschilles is such a twisted deviant that Peter really never has time to be; almost from the time Valentine and Ender leave for their first voyage, Peter seems as altruistic a would-be megalomanic dictator as the world could ask for; he's far less selfish than the vast majority of politicians in the real world. The passion and foreshadowing of Bean's vow at the end of Ender's Shadow, to destroy Peter if he had betrayed Ender, never really amounts to anything more than a little bickering. It might have been interesting to see a bit more maneuvering and conflict between Bean and Peter, or Peter and Graff; to get to watch more of Peter becoming the great hegemon in character as well as in age and status.
Of course, what bothers me most about the series is the way that it progresses and finally ends for Bean. As Hobbes said, "if your character grows and learns from their life experience the initial conflict or tension that made them interesting to the reader (and normally also cause the whole story to get going) disappears and your story then either has to end or move on with a different focus." Bean never actually experiences this. Yes, he grows in his ability to love; he learns how to have normal (or almost normal) human emotions. But the central tension of Bean's character has always been what he said about himself when comparing himself to Ender for the first time; "I'm going to survive, and once you know that, there's nothing more to know about me." In this defining factor, he never actually grows; he spends the better part of two books hiding from Aschilles instead of confronting him directly, and then when given the choice to either fly away and survive or stay on earth and die, he abandons his wife and half of his children (even though it doesn't actually buy him any more time). What's more, while Bean remains static in his character growth, he actually seems to get dumber the bigger he gets. His voyage at relativistic speed at the end of Shadow of the Giant reminds me of the revised ending of the movie I Am Legend; all of the foreshadowing, all of the hints, all of the lead-up to Bean's ultimate decision about Anton's Key abandoned for the sake of something that was more dramatically satisfying.
Of course, in the end Card didn't have much choice. The picture of the hundred worlds that we are given in the Ender Quartet does not allow for the existence and proliferation of a sub-species of exceedingly brilliant giants. That universe might allow for a few who colonized a far distance planet and have not yet encountered mankind a second time; or have evolved to the point of becoming something non-human, as so many theorize might be the origin of the descolada. But if Bean's children had been allowed to survive on Earth, had been trained in genetics and biology beginning at age 2 and had solved the short-lifespan problem of Anton's Key (or even just decided to reproduce young and live with it), there is no way that their lineage would not have either gained control of or at lease prominence in the ruling of the hundred worlds, or else have been wiped out in a series of deadly wars. For someone who places so much responsibility on genetics to determine the course of one's life, Card could not have let them simply integrate into the rest of humanity.
Of course, that doesn't quite explain why Arkanian Delphiki is such and underwhelming character, but then we don't get to see all that much of him.
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quote:The picture of the hudred worlds that we are given in the Ender Quartet does not allow for the existence and proliferation of a sub-species of exceedingly brilliant giants.
The God of Path is Gloriously Bright. Even if she isn't Gloriously Tall.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Of course, in the end Card didn't have much choice. The picture of the hundred worlds that we are given in the Ender Quartet does not allow for the existence and proliferation of a sub-species of exceedingly brilliant giants. That universe might allow for a few who colonized a far distance planet and have not yet encountered mankind a second time; or have evolved to the point of becoming something non-human, as so many theorize might be the origin of the descolada. But if Bean's children had been allowed to survive on Earth, had been trained in genetics and biology beginning at age 2 and had solved the short-lifespan problem of Anton's Key (or even just decided to reproduce young and live with it), there is no way that their lineage would not have either gained control of or at lease prominence in the ruling of the hundred worlds, or else have been wiped out in a series of deadly wars. For someone who places so much responsibility on genetics to determine the course of one's life, Card could not have let them simply integrate into the rest of humanity.
I disagree. Intelligence is not necessarily a key factor in evolution, but rather adaptation. There may not have been a solution for the early death, in which case many offspring may simply have died before reproducing themselves.
Unless they interbred, typical human genes had the potential of diluting it. We already know that not ALL of the offspring would have the key turned anyways.
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"There may not have been a solution for the early death, in which case many offspring may simply have died before reproducing themselves.
Unless they interbred, typical human genes had the potential of diluting it. We already know that not ALL of the offspring would have the key turned anyways."
The genetic picture of Anton's key in the shadow series isn't all that clear, but best guess is that it is some type of dominantly inherited trait. Even though Anton says that there are two gene loci (one turned on and one turned off), we have to assume that they are close enough together on the same chromosome that no amount of normal chromosomal crossover would separate them. We can assume this because nowhere in the (limited) discussion of Bean and Petra's children does it mention any of them being either savants of normal size or giants of 'normal' intelligence (though you could make a strong case for Arkanian Delphiki being no more intelligent than one of Bean and Petra's "normal" offspring). Volescu contradicts the idea of any type of autosomal inheritance in his discussion with Sister Carlotta in Ender's Shadow, but he was of course lying during the pertinent parts of that conversation. So if the inheritance pattern really is autosomal dominant then we should expect to see Anton's Key turned in about half of an affected person's offspring with a normal human; this is exactly what we see in Bean and Petra's children.
Now assume for a minute that Bean's children had stayed on Earth and been trained in Biology from a young age in a desperate race to save their own lives (I still think this would have made the most logical ending to the book, and have yet to find a reasonable in-story explanation for why it would not have been), but were still unable to find a cure for the 'early death' problem. They might have made a couple of decisions. First, they may have decided at that point to act as Bean eventually did act and fly away into space, which would be consistent with the picture of the hundred world's we have from the Ender series. Second, they might have decided not to reproduce so that no one else would be born with their condition, allowing their 'species' to die off, which would also be consistent with their absence from the hundred worlds, but not very likely considering that Bean did not even, ultimately, do this (and children raised in a loving family would be much more likely to reproduce, not less) . Third, they might decide to have a go at becoming the 'giant floating brain monster' type of thing that Volescu had wanted Bean to become, which would not be inconsistent with the hundred worlds but would be pretty terrible (I could not see Card doing this to them!). Or fourth, they might decide to live out their lives as normally (and quickly) as possible; beginning their educations very young, falling in love and marrying young, having children young, and finally dying at 20 or 25 having accomplished more than most people accomplish in a normal lifetime.
So you are right if you are saying that Bean's children living on Earth instead of flying off into space to start the descolada (or whatever they did) would not be totally inconsistent with the picture already established in the Ender series (and in fact would be a far better ending to the Shadow series). But that depends entirely on either a decision they each made or external factors eliminating them from the gene pool, or else something odd about Anton's Key making it either weaken or disappear in successive generations. But if Bean's children had stayed on Earth (or colonized) and reproduced, then there is no way that they would not eventually be a huge part of the population of the hundred worlds. Bean was barely 16 when he and Petra begin to have children, while Petra was at least 19 and possibly older (others are going to be better at giving us exact ages here). We don't consider this odd or inappropriate because Bean's genius and insight (and life experience, sure) made him seem much older, and because his biological development does not incorporate an obvious pubescence. His children with Anton's Key would also be geniuses and probably just as insightful (maybe much more so), and would have the same type of development, and so might also be expected to reproduce young. 50% of their children would have Anton's Key, and those kids would also reproduce young. Do you see the picture here? The subset of the population with Anton's Key would be expected to produce 1.5 to 2 new generations for each new generation produced by those with normal lifespans. Assuming that they reproduce an average number of offspring similar to the larger population (Bean and Petra had 9 but only tried for 1, so who knows?), eventually they would OUT-breed normal humans, not be diluted away. Since Card did NOT write the Ender series set in a future where a large part of the population are gigantic geniuses who live short lives, he could not end Ender's Giant by allowing Bean's children to stay on Earth and have normal lives.
Even if, in my opinion, he should have.
All of that is just a long way of saying that I think you're right, that the happiness of Bean and his family wasn't completely incompatible with the future as presented in Speaker, Xenocide and Children; it would just require more explanation as to what eventually happened to prevent Bean's descendants from taking over the world.
Posts: 11 | Registered: Apr 2011
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quote:The picture of the hudred worlds that we are given in the Ender Quartet does not allow for the existence and proliferation of a sub-species of exceedingly brilliant giants.
The God of Path is Gloriously Bright. Even if she isn't Gloriously Tall.
That's true. It might have been an interesting story how the government of the hundred worlds eventually found a way to replace the 'continuous growth' problem of Anton's Key with the OCD trait found in the God Spoken. Of course, the genetic patterns are vastly different, but it still would have been a possible solution to the problem of Bean's descendants; potentially a better solution than "oh, they got on a spaceship and left."
I probably ought to point out here that even though I am going on and on about this, it's really only because I'm dissatisfied with the ending to Shadow of the Giant. I am re-reading the Shadow series for the third time; I love the books and Card's work. I just stop reading at page 290
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