posted
A couple of recent threads have shown that some people have a much different perspective on Ender's Shadow than I do. In fact, I haven't seen anone here who has agreed with the way I see it, so I figured I'd put it out there and see what people thought.
In his thread on the changing style of OSC, IanO said that Ender's Shadow didn't give him a sense of any emotional climaxes. In the thread comparing Ender's Shadow to Ender's Game, people have said that they found Bean to be supremely intellectual and pretty much without emotions. This jarred with me because I saw Ender's Shadow as containing a very fulfilling climax specifically because of Bean's emotional development.
There's a part in the book where the people running Battle school talk about how Ender, the most socially connected of the geniuses, had to face his adversary alone, while Bean, the most isolated, went with a whole squad of people. I saw this as one of the major themes of the book.
Bean is very invested in his own self-sufficiency, to the point where he tries to deny emotional and personal attachments. It's hard to blame him, considering the environment he ws born into. The thing is, Bean's conscious denial of these things doesn't mean that he doesn't need them or that he is subconsciously seeking them and letting them affect him. Often, in the very passages where Bean is consciously musing about his robot-like emotionless nature, he betrays his actual emotions and attachments.
Bean is driven to total self-reliance, both by his situation of growing up on the streets of Rotterdam, where, espeically as a seemingly worthless ally, he had to rely soley on himself, and by his constitution of being intelectually far superior, even among the best of the best, in situations where intelligence was the major determiner of success.
However, there is a basic need for interrelationships, for connectedness, that opposes these drives towards isolation. At some level, Bean is looking for people to trust and, in a way, take care of him. He forms attachments to Poke and to Sister Carlotta. Even while denying these attachments, he feels guilty over betraying Poke and he feels angry over what he sees as Sister Carlotta's betrayal of him. These emotions show that Bean is far from acting only pragmatically.
Bean's emotional development continues in Battle School. As the other students are spurred towards intellectually bettering themselves by Ender's superiority, Bean, Ender's intellectual superior, is nudged towards deepening his emotional life by Ender's connectedness. Ender becomes both the standard and the means of this goal.
Bean truely comes to care about the people around him. His army feels this. It's one of the reasons they are willing to listen and trust him. It's no accident that Bean is the only one who does something for Petra after she breaks down. The others, laboring under the enormous pressure, have been driven into the sort of isolated state that Bean has sort of grown out of. They can't afford to care about Petra. Bean, less constrained by this pressure and also more familar with isolation, is the only one able to act on his attachment to Petra. Which leads to the ultimate emotional climax of the book, Bean's transmission of the Absalom quote to the members of the suicide starships' crews. In that moment, Bean truely, genuinely feels a profound connection to these human beings he never has and never will meet.
I found this theme of Bean's development both powerfully and masterfully done. OSC is almost sneaky, the way he slips references to Bean's emotions subtly into his conscious musings. I thought that this was a tremendous example of showing and not telling.
Of course, maybe I was seeing something that wasn't actually there. Is this just a strange reading of the book? Have other people seen it in a similar way? I'd like to know.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
It was interesting to see the story from another perspective. Remarkable that it was rather well done. Surprising to see how different these two books are.
Posts: 17 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
And for all of Ender's "connectedness", he was the most solitary character in the story. Bean had deeper attachments, even if he was not consciously aware of them.
But then, that was the set-up, neh?
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
i agree. i can see a bit of a parrllel towards my life in that-- i grew up an only child (though, statistically speaking, i am not one), and i had no neighborhood friends, cousins, etc to play with. i also lived very far from any friends at school, so i rarely ever saw them in my free time. as a result, i have learned rely solely on my own imagination for entertainment. and when i did start school, i was rather emotionally detached even with people who i considered best friends. i was also oblivious to any subtle connections between myself and others, or others and others. (if you follow me). often i was suprised when someone would, say, invite me for a sleepover, because i hadn't even realized we were friends. (pleasently suprised, of course). but, i have become one of the best people in our little group of friends at talking to people. i'm not afraid to go up to somebody and talk about something important. unless, of course, that something has to do with me. if it's about other people, i have no problem talking to them, just like with Bean. basically, i can risk everything because i have nothing to lose.
Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I think what Shan said is apt. It's important to understand the nature of myth. It's a good vicarious root for understanding, but not necessarily a good model.
I doubt you have nothing to lose, but I'll bet you're every bit as feisty, if not more so, than Bean.
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I like Ender's Shadow. I am very impressed that Card pulled it off.
I have a friend who read Shadow before Game. She swears that Shadow is better, while I would choose Game any day.
But, just recently I've come to realize that OSC is one of the few authors in all the world who is capable of writing a parallel story that doesn't explicity contradict anything in the original. He's been doing it all along, with Alvin-Joseph Smith and the Homecoming Series and the Book of Mormon. This was just the first time he stole from himself.
I'm not using stealing in a derrogatory term here, maybe borrow is the better word. Taking an existing story and making it unique and fresh is the more difficult task for many writers. Card seems to have a talent for it.
posted
Well, it's been awhile since I've read Shadow, and I'm sorry if I'm repeating stuff (I'm new!)but my opinion was actually that Bean was like a little robot in the beginning, something manufactured, with only brainpower and no human connections, until he meets Poke, and he becomes more and more human throughout the story until at the end, he has a mother, father, and brother and is fully a "real boy" with a loving family.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Yeah, it definitely has the pinnochio element to it. I wrote a thread about that last year, how all Card's stories seem to have that search for one's purpose.
Maybe Bean, in exchange for his nearly prescient intelligence, is emotionally myopic. Really, though, I don't think most people are too good a knowing how they are going to feel about someone. I almost think being surprised by one's emotions is a sign that one is using one's brain rather than living by scripts.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I don't buy any argument that Bean is emotionally distant. Disciplined - maybe. But the section in Ender's Shadow that reads:
[bean just gave the order to detonate the MD inside the ship]
Bean ducked his head, so his voice would be heard only by the men under his command. And then, for just longe enough to speak, he pressed the override that put his voice into all the ears of all the men of that distant fleet.... (skipping ahead)
"O my son Absalom," Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man's mouth. "My son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!"
Man, I still get teary-eyed reading that part. Bean is strong and disciplined, and CERTAINLY EMOTIONAL.
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