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It's weird. I don't actually think Petra would have made any better of a wife for Ender than Novinha did.
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Maybe I am mental, Sticky, but you aren't presenting a particularly convincing argument yourself-- why do you think Novinha's selfish?
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I think OSC should write a short story about how the day after Ender left a ninja popped out of nowhere and chopped Novhinia's head off and everyone laughed and cheered.
posted
first of all, i do think noviniah was a bit histrionic, but i do sympathize with her. how bitter would you be if you found out that by trying to help the one person you loved most in the world, you actually became the cause of their death? i'm not excusing her behavior totally, but there are some issues there.
she lost her parents at a very young age. then she lost the man she came to think of as a father. then she lost the love of her life. her son was almost killed and left damaged, for lack of better terminology, because of a secret she had been keeping. all of that has to twist and manipulate a person's psyche. i'm honestly surprised she didn't end up more unstable than she did.
and as far as her being jealous of jane and that making her selfish . . . how is that selfish? she loved ender and there was no competition for him. that wasn't the case with her. jane was definitely competition. and can you imagine how it must feel to know that your husband has given a special part of his heart to something that doesn't even have a body? to a glorified program that cannot be touched (i know she became a real person, but not while ender was alive) or held or share in the physicality that husbands and wives share sacredly when truly in love? it would have killed me.
why is it that people seem to understand why jane was jealous of noviniah, but not the opposite? is it because jane was there first? that's a bit silly. yes jane was there first, but ender chose the only PERSON he could, the only PERSON he loved enough to be with.
and as to why he married her . . . he loved her. you can't help who you fall in love with. even if everyone else in your life hates someone, there are some things you see when you spend enough time with someone that other people just can't. either they are too closed-minded, or just to ignorant to see past the surface. noviniah loved ender, and he loved her. what better reason to get married?
Posts: 52 | Registered: Apr 2005
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i'm quite sure that you have read the books. however, to be so freaking one sided about something, i'm not sure you necessarily understood them all that well. or maybe you are one of those closed-minded people i was talking about and can't just accept that other people have different opinions and are capable of analyzing information to figure out all of the depths a subject can have.
i will remember in the future that only opinions that agree with the majority are acceptable. i'll learn to be that which i despise the most, a simple minded conformist. no offense.
Posts: 52 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:i will remember in the future that only opinions that agree with the majority are acceptable.
I can understand the bitterness that could drive you to say this, ironically or not. Nonetheless, we don't all agree with StickyWicket, as a couple people have already posted.
Personally, I believe Novinha had moments where she was selfish. The one Sticky mentions does show her as thinking specifically of herself, which is one definition of selfishness. But I believe a better term to describe that relationship is jealous, and that your interpretation of events has great merit, and that the jealousness of a wife toward a husband is righteous, just as God declares himself a jealous God.
Just another example of OSC's learning from Shakespeare -- everyone is the protagonist of his own play (I paraphrase, I believe). In fact, the whole concept of Speaking evidences, at least in Ender's mind (and in the mind of most readers) that Novinha isn't a "pile." Nobody is.
Novinha annoys me, but I think kat's adjective is apt. She's broken.
posted
it was irony, and i'm glad that someone recognized it. i do realize that others had given differing opinions. i respect everyone's opinion, and do not fault someone for thinking what they think. i love hearing differing viewpoints because it opens my mind to sides of an issue i may have overlooked or never even seen.
as for the term broken, i do believe that is the most accurate way of describing the woman. she was, by all means, obnoxious often, but it was because of the deeper turmoils. because i can see that and relate, i guess she doesn't annoy me as much.
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quote: I think OSC should write a short story about how the day after Ender left a ninja popped out of nowhere and chopped Novhinia's head off and everyone laughed and cheered.
posted
Novinha was so broken that she was, well, broken. She's unlikeable. Ender assigned her to himself as a sort of long-term project and, as far as I can tell, a form of penance -- a way of surrounding himself with people who constantly needed tending.
I found her completely unsympathetic.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Personally, Novinha always frustrated me to no end like characters from tv soaps, simply by being so completely unreasonable and obnoxious to everyone she loved. I guess that can be explained by her fear that everyone she loved would leave her, but she still grated on my nerves. I always seemed to picture her as the epitome of despair.
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You also have to remember that Ender first started falling in love with Novinha when she was the little girl asking for a speaker for Libo (right?).
Posts: 1547 | Registered: Jan 2004
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good memory midnight blue. he started falling in love with the innocent young woman she was then. he saw what was really underneath that cold, hard mask she wore for everyone after losing the people she loved. but she called for andrew to speak pipo's death if i remember correctly. and miro called for someone to speak libo's death, and the oldest sister (who's name escapes me at present) for her step father. or maybe those 2 were reversed, my brain doesn't work so well when i haven't had sleep and my 4 year old is jumping on me like a trampoline.
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But, it was Ender, who for good or for bad chose her. I don't think that we should get with it.
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quote: Novinha was so broken that she was, well, broken. She's unlikeable. Ender assigned her to himself as a sort of long-term project and, as far as I can tell, a form of penance -- a way of surrounding himself with people who constantly needed tending.
Novinha a long-term project? Ender's the one who took a few thousand years to come around! I recall that somewhere in Speaker it's said that the reason Ender loved Novinha was because he understood her pain, having been broken himself as a kid much like she was when her parents, then Pipo, died. Ender was attracted to that pain like a magnet. I also remember that the reason he loved Lusitania was because it was an example of goodness struggling out of a tortured past, like himself.
That, I think, is why he married her.
quote: "But now he would go [to Lusitania] for another, deeper reason. He would go to minister to the girl Novinha, for in her brilliance, her isolation, her pain, her guilt, he saw his own stolen childhood and the seeds of the pain that lived with him still."
-SftD, pg 65
(And I also don't think an Ender-Petra marriage would have worked out too well. I don't think Ender would appreciate a wife who only idolized him and ignored his flaws. Besides, she didn't know what it was to be a broken person, like Novinha was, and Ender. Worked out good with Bean, though, even if there was the whole genetic problem thing.) Posts: 973 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Hm. I came to love Novinha over the course of the book. I was so amazed that I could love someone like her that I realized that I could love anyone in the world. Coming to love Novinha was a turning point in learning compassion for me.
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posted
A Petra-Ender marriage would also not have worked because Petra never really recovered from falling asleep during that one battle. She probably would have either idolized him, as CRash said, or she would have constantly felt like she had to prove herself to him to make up for falling asleep. I thought that was one of the saddest parts of SOTG; when Petra tells Peter that she would not come off looking so good if someone did a real biography of her (I assumed this was because the biography would tell of her falling asleep), and then when Peter talks to Ender, Ender says “you got the best of us.” I felt like it was a weight lifted off MY shoulders to know that Ender didn’t hold it against her for falling asleep. That got to me just about as much as “hello, mama.”
And I also wanted to hit Novhinia with a blunt object. Anything with in arms reach would suffice.
Posts: 43 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I felt sorry for Novinha because she lost her parents, a father figure and her true husband, not to mention a son later on, but she pisses me off the way so many wives on television do. The jealous kind who fuss if their husband has a friend, a good deep friend that cares about them, that there is no heat at all with, and they feel so insecure they have to bully their husbands into ending the friendship so they can feel better about themselves. The sort who cannot understand that other people besides them have suffered and it's not the fault of the person who they are blaming. I hated it when Ender shut himself off from the world to sulk with her in a convent, because he loved her so much, enough to sacrifice himself for her, enough to totally waste away from boredom, something she'd never do... But, she was a brilliant scientist, she was intense and intelligent, I didn't want to hit her, but I sure did think she was clingy, wounded, and extremely difficult. I also was a bit jealous of her for getting a cool guy like Ender.
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posted
There's was actually a somewhat involved Novinha's bashing discussion in a relatively recent thread. It's starts here in case people are interested.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I find Novinha tragic but frustrating. She is so wrapped up in her own guilt and suffering that she essentially abandons her family and refuses the healing that is offered her. She only knows what she's got when it's gone.
Like none of you know any real people like that.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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I find her tragedy to have its roots in Catholicism, we hear a great deal about how we Catholics have no joy in our faith, just institutionalized guilt. I once told my mother that the Church deliberatly placed restrictions on all the things that the body wants, to create sufficiant inevitable guilt to turn a continious profit.
I think OSC unconsciously passed judgement on the Catholic family in the creation of Novinha's. The most attractive thing for me about the LDS faith is the health and vitality of the families it creates. A valid source of pride, perhaps from the inside of that faith the things others get up to seem a bit insane.
What makes me wonder about the possibility of some sort of chemical imbalance is Quara, it may be that she is just a defect breeding true. Of course it could be that she is screaming at the universe, "I just as big a perverse hateful rockhead as my mom, where is my Andrew!" So enter Bean! Tall dark and dying! Just what Quara needs.
quote:What makes me wonder about the possibility of some sort of chemical imbalance is Quara, it may be that she is just a defect breeding true. Of course it could be that she is screaming at the universe, "I just as big a perverse hateful rockhead as my mom, where is my Andrew!" So enter Bean! Tall dark and dying! Just what Quara needs.
I hope that Quara's issues will be addressed in the post-Children book. I felt like she was just left hanging in her misery. Of course, some people never do get out of such a rut, but I did have some hope that Quara could find release.
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Then again, I love the touch in SotG in which they go to Hebera, Brazille... and the middle names of those in SotD.. HELLO!
(I still contend that the Novhinia and others are the logical decendents of Bean/Petra's children who did not have the genetic abnormality)
Posts: 202 | Registered: Aug 2005
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That's why I want to smack her sometimes, because she won't love herself. Because of that she can't really love anyone else. She just clings to them in desperate terror that they'll leave her, and then feels betrayed when they all die.
But what would be the point of hitting her? It won't help her, two decades of Marcao didn't help her, what can you or I do in half a second with a 2x4? And it wouldn't make you feel any better either.
Sometimes love has to be unconditional. Meaning, not only are you not getting anything out of it, but the person you love isn't getting any benefit either. Unconditional love means loving even when it doesn't help at all.
I know people like that, and I love them. But I accept that sometimes love doesn't get you or them anything in return. That's why it's a commandment rather than a suggestion. Suggestions you can obey or not as seems good to you. Love isn't like that. You weep for the unrepentent damned or you don't worry about whether anyone could have been saved.
Play any other game, and you reduce individuals to units. If I save this one, it makes up for losing that one. What a worthless way of thinking.
Posts: 763 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I like her but she really annoyed me in the story. I had always hoped that Ender would have a biological child so when she went and joined the (o geez dont remember name) the group that was against sex even in marraige it really saddened me.
Posts: 832 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Filhos de Mento de Cristo . . . something like that. Children of the Mind of Christ.
Anyways, I think that Novinha was right for Ender for this reason: if it was Petra with Ender, she would've worshiped him, just like the rest of the world. He didn't want that. He was sick of that. He ended up with a woman who wasn't more like a puppy, and Petra ended up with someone she could love and not idolize.
Posts: 6 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by StickyWicket: Serriously, when I got to the part in SotH where Petra is recalling outlandish fantacies like raising a family with Ender and having everyone see that "the best human being to ever live" chose her to be with, it just made me want to grab Novhinia and smash her face in with a 2x4.
SotH?!?! Speaker of the Head?
Posts: 42 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I think he meant Shadow of the Giant, the "h" and the "g" are right next to each other on the keyboard.
Anyways, I'm not sure how to describe Novinha, but I think OSC definitely gave her alot of depth and made here a really complex character, especially since almost everyone here has a different opinion about her. There are so many different ways to understand what she did.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:I think he meant Shadow of the Giant, the "h" and the "g" are right next to each other on the keyboard.
Anyone else find this really strange? I tried and I'm just not able to express why this strikes me as so odd. Something about the domination of the latest book over the preceding ones in the mindscape.
---
Maybe Mojo and Dornick can shed some light on it. Guys, SotH = Shadow of the Hegemon, the first book in the Shadow series (or second, if you count ES). I'm honestly very interested in why this didn't suggest itself to you. Could you maybe reflect on this? I'd be appreciative.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Too many abbreviations! Seriously, I wasn't even thinking about which book the scene Sticky described occured in. I just read "SotH" and he said Speaker for the Head and I thought...Sticky couldn't have made such a big mistake in abbreviating. And then I remembered reading another abbrevation that reminded me of that and I remembered it came from Shadow of the Giant. I looked at the keyboard and saw it was a feasible typo. I figured it's probably Shadow of the Giant. Or maybe I didn't even think all of that (it probably occured much faster then I described it). I don't even remember anymore. My head hurts now. Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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SotH = Shadow of the Hegemon, the first book in the Shadow series (or second, if you count ES). I'm honestly very interested in why this didn't suggest itself to you. Could you maybe reflect on this? I'd be appreciative.
At least someone is awake, how did all of you not understand what i ment?
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how do you get Speaker For The Head out of SotH? forget that For starts with an "f" not an "o"?.......
Posts: 128 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Really old topic, but just got to the end of the Ender series and was waiting for a reason to add up Novinha so I could lose my desire to have Jane toss her Outside and leave her......
Byebye Novinha.
Yes, she had a tough emotional life, but she had a pretty ridiculously functional brain and lived with Ender for decades for crying out loud, and had Valentine to lay it out in outline form for her. She should have learned something, or at least aged beyond 12.
Most wonderfully annoying character I have ever read. Love her, hate her.
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She is up there on the annoying scale with Petra's mother, Lared's mother, Ender's mother.... come to think of it, OSC doesn't write too many moms that well... hmmmmmm.
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I disagree with the mother characters being annoying, Orincoro. I found them to be some of the most realistic, down-to-earth people of the series. I liked Novinha and Theresa Wiggin in particular. Of course, I've always identified with the females in Card's books because I am one. I think OSC does a fine job of writing moms.
Posts: 973 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I don't like Novinha at all. She really irratated me even as I fell sorry for her. Perhaps I was jealous of her for getting a lovely man like Ender. I didn't like Ender's mother's speech in one of the Bean books... It rather annoyed me a bit, and I have a specific reason why. The mother in Lost Boys was cool, but she bugged me the way she kept going on about her son having imaginary friends... Maybe it's because I am a solitary person myself so I dont' see not having a lot of friends as a big problem. Peggy's mother was cool. Especially the way she looked out for Arthur Stuart. But Novinha irratates me to no end... Especially the jealousy thing. Dang, does that annoy me. I am so not like that.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by CRash: Of course, I've always identified with the females in Card's books because I am one. I think OSC does a fine job of writing moms.
eek, then I'd like to see an example of some moms you DON'T approve of. Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Oooo, seriously. I am both a female and a mother (most times one implies the other, but...) and this ownership thing is sick sick sick. You dont own or owe spouses and children. Your job as a mother is to support, teach, help them become whole people, not dependent clingons or teach them victimhood and "what about memememe".
Your job as a spouse is to be and have a helpmate, not buy something to use and own. "Forsaking all others" refers to the specific intimate family bond, not ALL bonds. There is more than one kind of love, and one friendship can be close and not interfere or replace another. I have many kinds with both sexes.
Problems in marriage are more often about loss of respect and friendship, not "theft" of an owned party.
Posts: 49 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by CRash: Of course, I've always identified with the females in Card's books because I am one. I think OSC does a fine job of writing moms.
eek, then I'd like to see an example of some moms you DON'T approve of.
I'm not saying I approve of their mothering methods, I mean that I approve of them as characters. Most of the bland stereotypical moms in novels are actually the "best" mothers, but they bore my brains out.
I like Card's characters because they have conflicts, and are nowhere near perfect, and some of them are just plain horrible at playing parent. In fact, pretty much all of the Enderverse moms are the worst parents I've ever seen: Theresa Wiggin hiding from her kids, Novinha's secret and the way it keeps her from the children, Petra's year of war while her newborns stay at home.
It's fun to read about them. (One mom I don't really approve of--as a character--is Lared's mom. Boring.)
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(One mom I don't really approve of--as a character--is Lared's mom. Boring.)
