While Ender and Val mostly worry about whether or not they’re like Peter, there are occasional flashes of other thoughts about identity. Like here. Mazer and Ender are talking about Petra’s breakdown, and Ender worries that he might crack up too, since part of his training was with Petra. Ender doesn’t crack the way Petra does, though – he’s cracking, what with the crazy dreams and eating his hands during his sleep, but he’s cracking differently. Ultimately, Ender doesn’t seem like Petra, but this thought does raise some interesting connections between the themes of identity and community – as if a person’s identity were related to his or her surroundings.

What’s the difference between killing someone and being a killer? Ender admits to killing but keeps asserting that he’s “not a killer.” Basically, it seems like Ender is asserting that the difference between killing and being a killer is because he didn’t “want to kill them all.” Or is the distinction something else – is it a question of identity that Ender is refusing? (Like, what if you type – does that make you a typist? Well, maybe for the time that you’re typing it does, but what about after?) This is the major issue in the book, and it’s a question that we can’t answer.

This is Ender, on his last day in “school,” when, for the first time in a while, Mazer isn’t around to tell him where to go. So, Ender is free, but suddenly doesn’t know what to do. We’re not entirely sure what’s going on here. Could it be that Ender has just gotten so used to being shepherded that he’s lost without Mazer? As if Ender’s life were reduced just to fighting the buggers and didn’t have any other ideas? Or is something else going on? Did you feel like Ender’s reaction to freedom should make us reconsider whether “freedom” is all it’s cracked up to be?