posted
Ok, I go back through the books every now and again for small things that bother me. There are a lot of things about the Ender's Shadow series that I didn't care for as much, but there were a few contradictions that gnawed at me.
Spoilers ahead
In "Shadow of the Giant" Graff informs Peter that he didn't go to Battleschool because he had no charisma, no ability to draw people to him as a leader.
But in "Shadow of the Hegemon" Bean, in meeting Peter at the bar in North Carolina notes how "drawn" sister Carlotta is to him, and how he has that piercing ability to get people to believe in him.
This is seemingly a major contradiction. Am I missing something or did I interpret this wrong?
Posts: 202 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
There were alot of other contradictions, but that was not one of them. Graff meant charisma in a way that he would make people want to DIE for him. That is not the same type of charisma that charms people. Peter has charisma in a way that one of my friends did. People are DRAWN to notice him, he commands attention, people will love him or HATE him, but he'll never get undying devotion.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
Neither will 99% of the Battle School graduates. That being said, Graff may have been lying to Peter. In Ender's Game, it is made apparent that Peter was disallowed because he was too aggressive.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
I agree with Triple-D on this one. Leadership isn't the same thing as charm, appeal, allure, whatever you want to call it.
It's said as far back as EG that Peter had charm, where the adults always saw him as the handsome eight year-old, and he apparently kept that charm as he grew, enough so that Bean sees him as a seducer in SotH. But no one really rallied to Peter as a leader because they genuinely loved him, as happened with Ender. Peter's support was gained through fear and war, and his supporters were those who said, "better him than the other guy", and joined him for his ideas and plans, not for the man himself.
Posts: 973 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
So here's a question: if Peter wasn't rejected because he was too aggressive, why did they specifically request that the Wiggin's next child be female? Are we to understand that the I.F. reasoned that soldiers would more likely give undying devotion to a girl? Really, I was never a fan of that little retcon in SotG. I'd like to think that it was just another manipulation and that the reason we're told in EG is true after all.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Who says they would have requested a girl if Peter wasn't too aggresive?
I believe the IF thought Valentine would grow up tough, because of Peter, but she would be a girl, and therefore, not as agressive.
Posts: 1164 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Jeesh: Who says they would have requested a girl if Peter wasn't too aggresive?
I believe the IF thought Valentine would grow up tough, because of Peter, but she would be a girl, and therefore, not as agressive.
That's my point. According to SotG, Peter being too agressive wasn't a problem. Therefore, that must mean that they weren't aiming for a less agressive Wiggin child. So why did they specifically request a girl, as it was stated in EG that they did, unless that wasn't the truth either?
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
They were always being so manipulative that it's hard to know what the truth really is. We usually find that most of what we think we know is just partial truths that tell only part of the story. It wouldn't surprise me at all to eventually learn that they had always planned on using a third, and that they felt that Valentine was essential in creating an emotionally balanced upbringing for the eventual third.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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In the Polish boy, we're led to believe that all of the Wiggin children were naturally conceived. Therefore, it's just as easy to assume that Graff was lying when he said they asked for a girl. It would feed into the lie he told Ender about Peter being too aggressive. Remember, they had to make Ender think he's not Peter. Smart as Ender may have been, no grown up is going to truly believe they could explain the small differences in leadership style to a child. It was much easier to simply say "Peter was too mean" and in a sense it was true. Again, in Polish Boy it became clear that they were watching the Wiggin children ALREADY to become THE commander, not just normal battleschoolers, so Peter didn't need to be too aggressive for battleschool to test out, just too aggressive for what they wanted.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
in ender's shadow a few of the administrators are talking about the ineffectiveness of the recruiting and selection of their commanders (bonzo madrid) its quite possible that the same mistake was present in peter's case.
just a thought. -Xray
Posts: 12 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
I would tend to believe that Graff wasn't being honest when he told Peter that he didn't have enough "Charisma". I think it's pretty well documented that Peter oozed charm, and, as someone said, you either love him or you hate him. Graff, I think, would definitely fall into the "Hate" category.
Posts: 31 | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
I wonder if Card will ever admit to basing Peter on any particular person.
The thing about Peter is I don't think he's ever a POV character in EG. The closest it comes is when Ender is writing The Hegemon at the end. My theory is that since Peter was not a point of view character, Card never went through the process of loving him enough to write him. When he had to do so in COTM, even though it was Peter in his distilled hypothetical nastiness, he is still more lovable than the Peter one met in EG.
In the end you wind up with a Peter in the Shadow series who doesn't need a speaking to be redeemed. That's just the way it worked out.
It's like how Bean was abnormally small, but when Card decided to get inside his head, he suddenly decided this would be an abnormally large person. To me, the Bean in EG is a very different person from the Bean in ES. I just have to think of them as totally separate stories that coincidentally have a lot of plot points in common. I love both books, though. And, that probably wouldn't have happened if ES had been written by a different author as was originally considered.
So, yeah, I don't think there is a unifying theory of Peter.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: The thing about Peter is I don't think he's ever a POV character in EG...
In the end you wind up with a Peter in the Shadow series who doesn't need a speaking to be redeemed. That's just the way it worked out.
Peter is a POV character for several scenes in the Shadow Series, and I think there is a coherant idea of who he is.
I think that Peter inside and Peter outside are completely different people, however, and so while I agree that Peter never needed to be redeemed for his own personal wholeness, I think his career would have left a lot of casualties--literally and figuratively--in his wake.
In the end, I have always thought that "The Hegemon" is a redemption of mankind, not of a man.
Posts: 31 | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote:To me, the Bean in EG is a very different person from the Bean in ES.
Huh. To me they are the same character, but it's just that Ender was so preoccupied with everything that he didn't notice much about Beam beyond his tactical skills.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
It helps that the differences between Ender's view of Ender-Bean interactions in Ender's Game and Bean's view are explained...like how Mazer tried to tell Ender that Bean couldn't handle a lot of pressure so that Bean wouldn't be so stressed out in case he had to take over. That was the biggest "er..." moment for me, reading Ender's Game (I read Ender's Shadow first), when Ender was considering the different skills of the people in his jeesh, and Alai was considered to be the smart one, while Bean could only wield small numbers of ships like a scalpel. And yet it managed to make sense, with that explanation.
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
i've read through this a few times and i dont think that we've mentioned the fact that peter was "slumbitch" when he was younger. i know someone mentioned that you could either love or hate peter.. but could you imagine a young peter in battleschool? he was more interested in playing little games with people and toying with their heads. instead of being a great comander, this young peter would make sure that the strong become weak and that the weak stay as they are. if he found himself in comand, i doubt it would be due to the fact that he earned respect but rather that he manipulated and twisted every person he could to get where he was.
no matter how smart he was, peter had a lot of boyish things that he needed to do before he could constructively use his aggression.
i thought it was a great point made when xray mentioned bonzo and how the administrations selection of commanders could be ineffective. but when i think of peter in battleschool, i think of bonzo. i think of peter having too much pride, being drunk with power, and becoming deadly when challenged.
Posts: 57 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Don't assume that Graff (a) tells Peter the truth or (b) even remembers what the truth is. People revise the "truth" they remember as they get older.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
that reminds me of something from the movie "waking life." two women discuss how someone can look at picture of themselves from childhood and then create a "truth" that is, infact, fiction of themselves. i dont remember the full extent of the conversation, i apologize, but i guess i just wanted to make the connection.
but to the point..
all through the series, characters (most often IF members) seem to say what people need to hear more often than speaking the "truth" or even their own opinion.
and last..
i thought mazer had that conversation with peter. i wish i had my own copy of SOTG.
Posts: 57 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: Don't assume that Graff (a) tells Peter the truth or (b) even remembers what the truth is. People revise the "truth" they remember as they get older.
WONK.
This is like when hardcore trekkies get together and say: how could Seven of Nine have gone back in time and met janeway in this later episode, if the first time Janeway and Seven met, Janeway didn't recognize her right away??? Huh???
Then they have to drink alot of chocolate milk and sulk for a few days until they come up with a time-bubble theory in which we are really viewing a parallel version of the universe starting from another episode where the voyager is split in two and one of the duplicates has to be destroyed.
Or maybe you just couldn't make up your mind about what Peter is really like. That might make more sense to me. Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I think you are reducing the problem to TOO SMALL a set of factors when you base it purely on aggression, and charisma. These are far more complicated people that just a few traits. Yes, Peter definitely has charisma and he is definitely a leader, but Ender is a military leader and Peter is a political leader. Those require different skill and personality sets. A military leader needs people to follow him without explanation. A political leader needs to convince people to follow him, which Peter does very sucessfully.
Also, who Peter is in his teens and later in life is not necessarily who he is when he is pre-pubesent. People change, they grow and mature. In both Peter and Ender's case, circumstance demanded that they mature very fast.
When Peter was younger and being evaluated for Battle School, he seemed to be very cruel and heartless. To some extent that aggression is needed in a battle leader, but it doesn't endear him to the people who are suppose to follow him.
When they had Val, they were trying not to simply moderate raw aggression, but to create a brilliant and charismatic version of Peter that was softer and more likable. But Val, personality wise, was not cooperating. I see her as much to contrary and too much of a rabble-rouser. So, she didn't work out.
When they finally got Ender, he was aggressive but not cruel. He was also compliant unlike Val, yet he was still an independant, free-thinking individual. They wanted someone they could mold, but not someone who would be a mindless drone, and they got that in Ender.
My point is that you have to look at the full spectrum of characteristics, and not just at raw aggression and pure charisma. Even those characteristics of aggression and charisma are far more complex the merely present or absent.
On the issue of Ender's point of view vs Bean's point of view, remember, as others pointed out, that there is a conspiracy to keep Bean's involvement to a minimum. Bean is not only doing his job, he is also monitoring Ender's job, and even has to step in a time or two to make up of Ender inattention. Because Bean is pre-occupied with other things, Ender can only use him for surgical strikes. Ender preception of Bean's inadequacies is re-enforced by Mazer because Mazer doesn't want Bean overloaded.
Ender has a certain preception, but he doesn't have the facts behind what is creating the preception. He is taking Bean at face value, but there is much much more going on behind the scenes that 'face value'.
At to the main point, I think that Gaff was telling the truth in the limited context and scope of the conversation. If they had had a few hours to sit and talk over the detail, we may have had more information. So, again, the context and scope of that particular converstion was limited.
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