Ender's Game (Part 4)

This may be my last post, but I can't fit the rest of the book into this little post... so I'll keep trying!

Wait... for some reason blogger won't let me post this with the original reflection that I had written. I'll try to post again later!

Ender's Game (Part 3)

     Ender was off to Battle School with about thirty other boys who were supposedly just as smart as he was, and just as capable of being a commander as he was. They blasted off into space with no belongings to their names (everything necessary was to be provided at the Battle School). On the way up, Ender accidentally broke a boy's arm. He was commemorated as being the only one man enough to be there. He was being isolated, which had been mentioned in the dialogue at the beginning of the chapters, socially. 

     Ender would realize how much this isolation helped him later, but at the moment he feels that it is unfair, and he isn't without reason. Imagine if you were separated from your friends and peers. It would be lonely and frightening, especially for a six year old in a new school that trains you in battle. 

     Ender begins to adjust to the new schedule at the Battle School, even though he has no friends in the school. He's learning to operate alone. He's already shown his prowess at technology and computer hacking and building defenses on his Desk (which is like a slightly larger iPad). You can get games on the Desk, and there's one game in which Ender is always using. He's a character in a world in which there are several different scenarios that you can switch between. But that becomes important later, when we learn about Ender's psychology. 

     Then the boys in Ender's 'Launch Group ' (the other kids he launched to the Battle School with) are introduced to the Battle Room. The Battle Room is at the center of the school and it has zero gravity, mimicking conditions in space. Ender and a boy names Alai take to the Room immediately. They start bouncing off the walls, testing ways to move and travel, and they figure out how to use these guns that they're given. The guns shoot a light/lazer-like beam that 'freezes' the person you aimed at (it makes their Zero G suits stiffen up so they can't move). Ender is commemorated again for his work, and he is alienated even further. 

     Alai becomes Ender's first friend at the school, which must be nice for Ender. He was isolated for months, and then he's reintroduced to the social world. I cannot empathize with how Ender must be feeling. I've never been alienated like that, but maybe it's a sort of good learning experience for everyone to have. So they know how others feel. 

     This segment showed how much the people who run the Battle School want to push Ender even further, to be a commander sooner, to lead and army young. They want him to be perfect for when the 'buggers' next attack, which could be anytime. They isolated him, and now he has a new friend who he can laugh with whenever. 

     This seems like too much happiness for Ender to deal with all at once. The Colonel Graff will probably end his enjoyment as soon as he possibly can. 

Ender's Game (Part 2)

     These blog posts will end by this coming Monday! My teacher is coming back and that's when this assignment is supposed to end!

     In what I read today, I figured out many of the things that had been vague yesterday. For example, Peter is Ender's brother, and Ender also has a sister named Valentine. Peter is obviously mean to Ender all the time. "'I could kill you like this,' Peter said, 'just press and press until you're dead.'" (page 12) Since Peter is older than Ender by four or so years, it's not too difficult to imagine the violent Peter killing Ender. 

     At the beginning of the next chapter there is a dialogue again. The people are talking about Ender and his sister and how Ender truly loves Valentine, and how she is his weakest link. But then the next morning, Ender is visited by a man named Colonel Graff. He asked Ender why he attacked the boy who bullied him after school, and Ender gave what I think is a very intelligent response. 

     "Knocking him down won the first fight, I wanted to win all the rest [of the fights], too." (page 19) Ender had said, talking about why he had kept kicking the bully after he had fallen and started bleeding. And what Ender had done was not smart, but he did have a good, tangible reason for doing so. Fortunately, Colonel Graff likes Ender's answer and decides that Ender should be admitted into the Battle School.

     From what I've read, I know now that the monitor is used to judge a person's character and track them to see if they're good enough for the Battle School. From what Colonel Graff had said, the Battle School is to train officers young so they can be used in something called the 'Bugger War', which is a war against aliens. 

     Ender agrees to go.

     Oh! And also, a Third is a third child. Thirds are apparently illegal, but the government let Ender's parents have him because they were hoping for the perfect general, and Peter had been perfect, he had just been too violent. Valentine had been too mellow, and Ender was supposedly a combination of the two. 

     This is really pulling me in.

Ender's Game (Part 1)

Hey! We’re finally at Ender’s Game! (NOTE: I’ve already read the book… this is just so I don’t give away anything)

     The first chapter of this book is very vague, but intriguing. The chapter stars off with a dialogue from two people whose names we do not find out. They’re discussing a boy who they think they can use. For what exactly is also a mystery at this point. Then the font changes and the scene seemingly cuts to a boy named Andrew (or Ender, as he is called throughout the book) who is sitting on a steel table at the doctor’s office or hospital or whatever it is, about to have something called a ‘monitor’ removed.

     We do not know what the monitor is at this time, we only know that it is getting removed by the doctor who ‘messed up’ the operation and twists the monitor out, but not. He calls in for backup and they save Ender. From what, exactly, is unclear. The doctor sighs in relief and lets him know a few small changes; he’ll be slightly disoriented for a while and he’ll feel like something is missing.

     Ender went back to his class, where the kids look at him and notice that his monitor is missing, gone, from the back of his neck. There we learn that Ender is something called a ‘Third’. We don’t know what it is, only that it is something degrading. We also learn that Ender is exceedingly intelligent. He says that he learned how to do arithmetic when he was three… at this point in time Ender is six years old. At the end of class some other, bigger kids bully Ender. They call him a ‘Third’ and they push him around. Ender strikes out and knocks the lead kid down, kicking him and making his nose bleed and obviously causing serious injury.

     Ender walks away, and says to himself that when they take away his monitor, he’s just like Peter.

     This chapter is confusing, since it has the quality that you’re being shoved into the middle of a novel. You feel like you should know who Peter is, what a monitor is, who the people who were talking in the dialogue were, and etcetera. But you don’t know, and it makes you want to read more. That’s an interesting quality for a book to have.

     From what I read, Peter is a violent, mean person. Ender obviously does not like Peter, and compares himself to this Peter constantly.  “I am just like Peter. Take my monitor away, and I’m just like Peter.” (page 8) I really want to find out who Peter is, but there will be more on that in the next post. The most intriguing thing in this chapter, though, is the dialogue. The people talk about ‘buggers’ and ‘saving the world’ and how ‘the boy’ (obviously Ender) could help them when in the correct circumstances. But what circumstances? Ender seems to be in the middle of a large, elaborate plan that he is unaware of and that we, as readers, are unaware of.

Little Brother (Part 8)

Notice: I have finished the book Little Brother. Posts on Ender’s Game will begin tomorrow.

    

     Marcus decided to escape from Masha when she brought him to the truck that would take him to a new place where he could live underground, in secret. He was smart to escape, in my opinion. Masha still could have been working for the Homeland Security for all Marcus knew. And he had to go back for Ange, who was being held captive for being associated with the Xnet and Marcus/M1k3y (as he was known on the Xnet). However, when Marcus went to sleep for the night under the freeway, he was caught by Homeland Security and brought to the prison again.

     Here I think he was rather tactless. Shouldn’t he have made sure he had disguised his face with mud or cloth or something? So he wouldn’t be recognizable from the pictures that were in a newspaper article about him. But he had slept in the open, and was therefore paying for his mistake.

     When he got to the prison, he was thrown into a cell for the night, and then brought into a room for interrogation. They performed a kind of torture known as simulated execution. As in, he would feel like he was dying or dead until they finished interrogating him. His form of simulated execution was to hang him upside-down and pour water down his nose and mouth so he felt as though he were drowning. They asked him for his username and password to his Xnet account, and he wouldn’t give it.

     Marcus was gallant not to give in, but it just caused him more pain. They had poured buckets of water down his mouth and nose, and he still wouldn’t give in. Here, I don’t think he was thinking about Ange or Darryl. If he had been thinking about them he would have done this differently. But he was able to hold in the information long enough for the reporter who reported his story to the newspaper to show up with the National Guard. They released him and all the other prisoners (but they were all still arrested until they paid bail). Marcus went to search for Ange and Darryl, and they all had a relatively happy ending.

     This is classic. It reminds me of Harry Potter, actually (I relate things to Harry Potter often). How Marcus had to topple a government, and how Harry had to defeat Voldemort, who had taken over the government. The interrogations about terrorists that Marcus’s government performed remind me of the interrogations that took place in the seventh Harry Potter book, when the government was trying to find out who was a real wizard and who was a ‘muggle-born’ wizard. The interrogations that happened in Harry Potter also included torture.

     The ending to Little Brother was classic. Marcus kissed Ange and they went out for burritos (well, the burritos weren’t classic, but it was close enough). The book contained the vague storyline of a young boy who leads a rebellion against a government or a person, succeeds, but has to go through many physical and mental challenges. The author did, thankfully, put a new, futuristic spin on the storyline.

     Overall, I did enjoy the book. It was a good read that didn’t take long to complete (I drew out the blog posts so they would last a week, even though I finished the book a few days ago). The author ended the book with a finality that shows it will not have a sequel. 

     And that is the last of Little Brother! I hope you'll miss it, because I will. 

Little Brother (Part 7)

     Marcus has gone into the danger zone. He’s told the whole story about being stuck in a prison and what had happened to his friend Darryl to his parents, Darryl’s dad, and a newspaper reporter; Barbara Walters. Marcus had decided to be daring, and I respect his choice, and it’s good that he realizes the danger of the resulting article, if it gets published.

     But things have turned slightly weird and creepy. A girl named Masha, who had been a part of the second secret Internet service, contacts Marcus. Masha tells him that she was originally working for Homeland Security, trying to figure out who, exactly, had founded the Xnet and why. But now she wanted out, and she was escaping with the others and wanted to bring Marcus with her. Marcus, though, wanted to bring Ange with him because they were girlfriend and boyfriend now, and getting really serious.

     Marcus called a huge meeting of people on the Xnet, they were going to all dress up in gothic vampire costumes and run around the Civic Center. That would get the police’s attention so this Masha could get him and Ange away and safe.

     The plan backfires, and they have to leave Ange behind with the other people from the Xnet. Masha takes him ‘captive’ and runs with him to the waiting truck, which would take them away and to the safe place… wherever that was.

     I do not think that Marcus is very intelligent, or does not think things through fully. This Masha could have been someone who could have arrested him, taken him straight to Homeland Security, or killed him on the spot. He never thought the Xnet through either, what he would do if he was caught, what Ange would do. He never thought through refusing to answer the questions that the people at Homeland Security had asked him when he was trapped, either.

     I know now that his loving parents would not stop him from escaping, but that he would go back to get Ange. He’s almost completely forgotten about Van, and Jolu is like a distant memory. This whole thing with the Xnet and the government has placed the rest of his life on hold, making escaping and being free his first and almost only priority.

Little Brother (Part 6)

This will start off as a summary so when you read you can understand anything that happened. Sorry for any inconvenience.

     Marcus is getting bolder and more public with his first private Internet service. It mainly started with a blog he made after going to a huge open-air concert that supported Marcus’s movement towards more freedom and rights. The people, mainly teenagers and people under the age of twenty, were all caught by the police for illegal activity, which Marcus reported later was unfair and cruel.

     Marcus and Ange started dating, to top it all off. Marcus and Ange started seeing each other most of the time, and they were almost always together in public, though Marcus still kept his identity as the founder of the Internet service (known as the Xnet) a secret.

     Marcus blogged the videos people had taken of the concert on the Xnet, and he made sure that he kept the identities of the people who had taken the videos anonymous, and he kept posting the videos and audio sequences that the people who had been at the concert had recorded, and many responses had come rolling in. All this time, reporters and newspapers around the globe had been reporting on the concert, and when they realized that there was yet another facet to the story, they called up Marcus on the Xnet (his handle (nickname) was M1k3y) and asked him for interviews and conferences.

     Ange had had the idea of calling a press conference on the Xnet. So Marcus obliged and held the conference. When he was done, his story and the people on the Xnet’s stories were being told truthfully across the world.

     I’m not sure what Marcus is doing. He had claimed earlier that this was just a small way for people to rebel, nothing public, nothing major. Just a way to surf the web, play games, and chat without the Homeland Security knowing exactly who you were and what you were doing every second of every minute. But now the police are searching for people using the Xnet on the streets and reporters can access it. And then Marcus called the press conference, which was like a nuclear bomb in the midst of all the chaos, in other words; a lot more chaos to add on to the growing pile.

     The weird thing is that Marcus seems ready to back down at any notice that the people on the Xnet are getting caught and hurt. So it’s like he’s leading them on with the press conference, as if the people on the Xnet can be even more outspoken, and then he reels them back in, telling them to be responsible with identity-stealing and etcetera. This has happened twice by my count so far, and I’m concerned about what Marcus must be thinking. This has turned into more than just a small rebellious group, now it’s a California-wide (and even farther) movement.