Community Quotes in Ender's Game

OK, we’re kind of being big old softies here: instead of quoting the times when Peter fights or threatens Ender, we’ve pulled this one quote where Peter expresses some warmth towards Ender. But that’s just it – this is almost the only time that Peter does this. The rest of the time, Peter reminds Ender that he doesn’t want a little brother. The funny twist here is that Peter says he knows how it feels, so there’s actually is a very important shared feeling between them.

This is Mick’s terrible advice to Ender. But there’s one thing that Mick gets right, which is that at the Battle School, you need to have a team – you need some friends to watch your back. (This is shown to be the case especially in the zero-gravity battleroom, where you need to have someone to push off against.) After all the talk about isolation and how it will help Ender be creative, it’s useful to hear someone forcefully make the opposite argument: Ender will need people.

We like to think about this quote in terms of community because it really shows the cost involved in not having (or losing) one – especially if someone joins another community. In this quote, Ender has gotten control over Dragon Army, and that screws up his relationship with his old friends. So he’s losing one social group pretty much just because he gained another. (Which we’re sure never happens in real-life schools. Right?)