10 Ender's Game Questions | Authors Trivia Quiz

Answer: Andrew

The story begins with scientists removing the monitor from the back of genius boy Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin's neck. This is just a test for the young boy. Clearly a special case, he continues to be watched over the next day, approaching situations without the direct link to his superiors.

When he fights some bullies at school, he considers himself no better than his aggressive brother, Peter, and fears the worst, but when Col. Hyrum Graff arrives the next day to take Ender to the Battle School in the Belt for further training-- a series of lessons that will take ten years to complete, he discovers that he may be the perfect candidate, a combination of his brother, Peter, and his nurturing sister, Valentine.

He heads off to play in War Games.

Answer: The Launchies

After leaving home, Ender is launched into space where he gets his first experience of being reoriented in null gravity. He gets picked on almost immediately after Graff singles him out and, in the ensuing taunting, he accidentally breaks a kid's arm, Bernard's. Graff later tells him that to kill the buggers, they need a commander and he needs to find his own way to succeed. Ender is given the lowest bunk near the door on his first day and is introduced to Dap, the Lauchies' 'Mom'; the isolation is almost too obvious.

He does, however, manage to show off in front of older students in the games room by quickly adapting to the controls and winning two of three games. He makes friends by standing up for some of the other boys, like Shen, mainly by psychologically defeating Bernard, the boy who taunted him on day one.

After a trip into the null gravity room for the first time he also makes a strong bond with Alai, who becomes the bridge leader. After he defeats a supposedly unbeatable giant in a virtual reality game, Ender's superiors decide to move him into an older army, forcing him to leave his new friends behind almost immediately.

Answer: Salamander

Ender is quickly slotted into Salamander Army, one of many animal-themed battalions living in the Battle School. This forces him to leave his new friends behind. It turns out that his new superior, Bonzo, is very eager to win in the battle rooms against the other armies, so much so that he will not allow Ender to participate in any way. To develop his skills, Ender allies himself with the only girl of Salamander Squad, Petra, who turns out to be the best sharpshooter of the group.

She teaches him after breakfasts. To put his techniques into practice he reunites with the Launchies to use a battle room during his free time period, a time that Bonzo can't touch.

He goes against Bonzo's orders during his fourth game, ultimately tying the opposing team, the best possible result they could hope for after Salamander's poor morale dooms them. Shortly after, he's transferred to Team Rat.

Answer: Dink Meeker

Bonzo trades Ender to Rat Team, a seemingly less-organized squad maintained by a strong Jewish figurehead, Rose, who does not initially approve of Ender. He's placed with Dink Meeker, a toon leader who operates independently from the rest of the Rats and, with Ender's guidance, he teaches the feet-first method employed by Ender in the battle room, reorienting his squad to gravity and improving their game. The rearrangement of battle strategies ultimately makes his bridge commander angry. He continues to obey Rose and succeed in his training at the same time, continuing to top the leaderboard.

Meanwhile, Ender continues training with Alai and Launchies. In the null gravity battle room, he and the other young boys are attacked by some of the older students but, thanks to Ender's clever battle strategies, all of the Launchies escape unharmed while Ender sends four boys to the infirmary. As a result he's encouraged to keep giving his lessons and he's assigned to train a forty-five boy squad-- larger than a typical team.

Answer: Demosthenes

Peter, Valentine, and the rest of the Wiggins move to North Carolina, partly to get closer to nature (for Peter's sake, to soften him). This doesn't turn out to be the case. Valentine knows he's going out into the forest to skin animals.
Peter talks to Valentine of war and suggests that they use their cunning, together, to make a difference, rising above the crowd with his fear-based strategy and her empathic persuasion. They pick up columns on the nets using their father's civilian account and taking the pseudonyms Demosthenes (for Valentine) and Locke (for Peter). Graff ends up speaking to Valentine a year later, trying to stop her brother from coasting through the academy and put an end to his stagnation in the Free Play virtual game. She writes a litter, almost forcibly, and ends up getting bribed with a high honour.

Ender, at the Battle Academy, is now a toon leader in the Phoenix army and Petra is his commander; Alai is also commanding a toon, as is Dink. Unfortunately Ender finds that he's isolated because he commands too much respect. When he reads the letter from Valentine, the first in four years (despite her other censored letters), he gets infuriate with the system he's become a part of, but has no choice other than to proceed.

Answer: Dragon

Considered ready to advance by his superiors, Ender is given Dragon Army and a fleet of fairly untrained (but qualified) boys ranging from fresh Launchies to newer recruits Their first practices are all drills, long before they can create strategic maneuvers. His smallest recruit, Bean, shows promise intellectually and Ender is shocked to find that he treats him like Bonzo and Peter once treated him.

Andersonn tells Ender that teams can no longer train with one another in the battle room, effectively ending his training group with his friends. He plans on getting back at his teachers for doing so.

Dragon Army battles Rabbit on their first game, three weeks into training, and wins, granting Ender access into the Commanders' Mess Hall. Only Dink speaks to him there, and as his win record continues to soar he's isolated even more.
Since he can't plan his own strategies with others in the battle room, he takes to watching old propaganda videos, an act which is mimicked by other commanders soon after.

Graff and Anderson try to gain insight into his activities but ultimately start ramping up the challenges, giving Dragon Army more battles per week, and even doubling the battles in a day, giving no chance to prepare. Nonetheless, Ender is able to command his toons to victory, even defeating Bonzo and Salamander Army when they had the advantage. This infuriates Bonzo.

That night, Ender gives Bean his own elite toon which he can construct from the ground up. He sees the potential and seeks to use this advantage to once again blindside the other armies.

Answer: Bonzo

The games get worse as the odds are continuously stacked against Dragon Army. Bean proves a useful tactician, experimenting with invisible twine known as deadlines. As Ender continues to win he's warned by Dink not to be alone at any time. Unfortunately, this doesn't last. Seven boys (including Bernard and Bonzo) ambush him in the showers. Dink tries to help but Ender has no choice but to battle Bonzo, who already wants to kill the boy. Despite the odds, Ender wins the fight, knocking Bonzo to the ground like he did Stilson three and a half years prior.

That evening, Dragon Army is sent to the Battle Room to fight two armies at the same time. Against expectation, Ender has his army use a formation and still wins. He criticizes Anderson for making everything unfair, so his toon leaders and assistants are all transferred to other armies. Bonzo is allegedly sent home to Spain, and Ender is sent to Command School several years early. When he and Graff head to the surface for a quick stop, Ender doesn't realize that Bonzo's corpse is with them in a body bag; he killed the boy earlier and the Battle School covered it up.

Answer: Eros

The higher-ups find out that Locke and Demosthenes are, in fact, Peter and Valentine, while the two kids learn that they may, in fact, be on the cusp of war with the Second Warsaw Pact. Graff asks Valentine to speak with Ender out on a remote lake-- he's been in the mountains for two months, firmly against the idea of further education. He says that he doesn't want to be a killer and he doesn't simply want heroics. He admits that he wants Peter to love him. Valentine convinces him to return to school and he realizes that the reason he was told to stay on Earth was to find a connection to it-- be it through nature or his sister-- and find something worth fighting for.

During the three month trip to Eros and Command School, Ender is told that the Third Invasion has been planned for decades; the humans have planned to attack the buggers for a long time as their goal, quite simply, is to survive at all costs. They're especially paranoid because they don't know what provoked the buggers in the first place.

Answer: The Dr. Device

When Ender arrives at Eros, he's kept out of typical classes for the most part, instead being told to focus his attention on a new virtual simulation, one which he perfects and completes after a year. It is at this point that Graff disappears from his training and Mazer Rackham, his new teacher and enemy, arrives. Rackham programs new battles to teach all he knows about strategy and the like as he was the one responsible for killing the bugger queen, effectively cutting off the enemy hivemind, during the Second Invasion. He also notes that they now have new technology in the form of a Molecular Detachment Device (a Dr. Device) to break past enemy shields.

After several bouts of training he is reunited with his former Battle School companions, all of whom he can form into squads for simulated fights. The difficulty is soon ramped up as the program works to counter Ender's battle plans and, soon, he pushes himself and his squadron leaders too far. He has trouble sleeping and wonders if he's going crazy. Finally, in one battle, he breaks, and is forced to take to his bed.

Although he's pushed to his limit he's told he's nearly done. In one final test, with all of his superiors watching, he must fight around a bugger planet, completely outnumbered. During this he deftly avoids the enemy, dodging foes before dropping to the planet like a rock and planting the Dr. Device, disintegrating the planet and ending the battle. It is then that he is told that he has been leading the Third Invasion the whole time-- ever since Mazer Rackham started 'teaching him'. He won the war.

Answer: A pupa

With the bugger war over, the Warsaw Pact starts wars on the surface of Earth. Eros becomes unsafe but, with protection, Ender is placed into a sleep for five days, awakening when his friends arrive. Alai, Dink, Bean, and Petra inform him that 'The Locke Proposal' has removed the Warsaw Pact from the International Fleet and ended the conflict. Locke, however, spurred by Demosthenes, avoids sending Ender back to Earth. Graff, meanwhile, back on terra firma, is acquitted of charges for the deaths of Stilson and Bonzo as well as any cruelty performed at the Battle School. Valentine meets with Ender on Eros to convince him to join her in colonizing the first of the empty bugger planets. She reveals that Peter saved millions with his proposal, stopping the war, and she retired Demosthenes after backing him. Mazer pilots the ship as they depart to the new world.

As a new ship nears their planet after several years, Ender seeks a spot for a new colony but is shocked to find the supposed dead giant and castle from his games (and dreams), and when he ascends into the castle he finds the pupa of a fertilized bugger queen resting inside. He holds onto it to right his wrongs, waiting until the time is right. Realizing that the wars were simply made due to a lack of communication, he writes 'The Hive Queen' under the guise of the Speaker for the Dead, a manifesto of peace. After publication on Earth and in the colonies, Peter, now a world leader, realizes that his brother wrote the work and and has him write 'The Hegemon' under the same name and with the same purpose. Both become quasi-religious writ around the galaxy. In the end, Ender and Valentine take off for other worlds, perhaps to find the perfect spot for the hopeful pupa to hatch.