They do two Battle Room matches: Ender's first match with Salamander, where Bonzo orders him not to fight and he ends up almost salvaging the battle by defying Bonzo's order, and Ender's last match with Dragon, where he is up against two armies and he cheats to win by sending his army through the gate before defeating his enemy. That is it. And that is basically nothing, because neither of those battles says anything meaningful about how the Battle Room works and what it teaches Ender. The Dragon Army match is almost incomprehensible, and certainly doesn't look like 'cheating', since we can't compare it to a normal battle.
I agree with you that will/won't Ender be a monster is appropriate as the first order question, but without the layering it doesn't work for me. I mean, I think is he or isn't he a monster is the question that Ender is asking himself, so it's appropriate to be part of the conversation, but... Ender is a child! Graff and Valentine are both more adult than he is, as he asks that question they should be able to challenge the terms on which he is approaching the question.
Graff not being fat doesn't bother me, but your objection makes sense to me in that it's similar to my objection to Graff being beholden to intermediate concerns beyond the successful completion of his all-or-nothing campaign against the buggers.
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Date: 2013-12-09 09:22 pm (UTC)I agree with you that will/won't Ender be a monster is appropriate as the first order question, but without the layering it doesn't work for me. I mean, I think is he or isn't he a monster is the question that Ender is asking himself, so it's appropriate to be part of the conversation, but... Ender is a child! Graff and Valentine are both more adult than he is, as he asks that question they should be able to challenge the terms on which he is approaching the question.
Graff not being fat doesn't bother me, but your objection makes sense to me in that it's similar to my objection to Graff being beholden to intermediate concerns beyond the successful completion of his all-or-nothing campaign against the buggers.