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.