This is Ender’s (correct) guess about the buggers. This hints at Ender’s big wish in his wars: that people would just leave him alone. For instance, he fantasizes about Peter leaving him alone (1.16) and he cries out to Dink that he didn’t want to attack Bonzo and wished that people would just leave him alone (12.122). What’s curious here is that Ender’s personal enemies simply won’t do that, but the buggers really are leaving humans alone.

Is it true to say that Ender hasn’t met people? Isn’t Battle School full of people? And why does the army need to isolate people when those people are these super-genius kids? After all, the army wants Ender to remain creative, but isn’t his creativity helped by his relationships with Alai and Bean? Graff lays out the reason why they do what they do here – and it’s a story we’ve heard before. But we hear it so many times that we can’t help thinking of some problems.

OK, after pointing out that Ender is a dangerous kid when it comes to competing, this part always gets us because he tells Val that it’s not about competition for him. He doesn’t want to compete against Peter – he wants a totally different relationship with his brother. Unfortunately, as we know from the first quote in this section, Ender and Peter’s relationship seems like competition (at least to Peter). But this quote does remind us that there are other ways for people to relate – we don’t have to compete with each other.