What Is The Theme Of Fear In Ender's Game

Sometimes people experience different feelings or different emotions

throughout their lifetime. But there is one emotion of them all that people want to avoid which is

called fear. Fear can cause people to act dangerously and differently, in which Orson Scott Card

clearly expresses this in his science fiction novel Ender’s Game. The novel reveals how fear can

influence a society by forcing people to give up their basic rights and exploit others. The adults in the novel abuse their power and take advantage of children

at the battle school. When Colonel Graff is privately meeting with Major Anderson, he tells him,

In another scene when Ender is sent to join the Salamander Army right before

“things were finally coming together” at Battle School for him and that “his life was finally

getting livable” (102). Ender is starting to make friends and build up his life at battle school but

then he gets disengaged from this by the adults. The adults isolate Ender to demoralize him in

such a way that Ender to make him feel like no one will be at his side or will ever come to his

aid.

Furthermore, people of society on Earth are willing to give up their

freedom and privacy in order to feel safe from the dangers of the unknown. After Ender has his

monitor pulled out of him, the doctor tells the nurse, “They leave these things in the kid for three

years” (33). The government puts these so called ‘monitors’ inside children to study their

behavior and surroundings after Earth was attacked by ‘the buggers’. Families give up their

personal lives at home so that they can feel protected from the peril in the outside world. When

Graff is explaining Ender the laws, he tells Ender, “You know the sanctions, Ender… Only

the first two children had a free education. Taxes steadily rose with each new child” (52).