Reading Reflection

Ender’s Game

In a futuristic world where people live under the ever-looming threat of the destruction of the human race by the alien species known as ‘buggers’, children are selected and trained in tactical warfare in preparation for the battle for humanity. Ender Wiggins, a third-born son in the world where childbirth is highly regulated, is unknowingly the pawn of the International Fleet’s machinations (IF) that has socially engineered Ender’s life to turn him into the brutally efficient tactician that they need in the Final Battle. Ender’s training, which plunges him into depression as he is horrified by how violent and ruthless he is becoming, ends with the final plot twist – the simulated battle sessions have actually been real, and Ender has inadvertently committed genocide when he destroyed the buggers’ home planet in his ‘final test.’ Upon learning of this, Ender turns his back on humanity, refusing to return to Earth in order to find a way to revive the species which is revealed to be highly sentient and social, much like human beings.

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies depicts the lives of a group of British schoolboys who are stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash. Initially democratic and determined to have “fun” while surviving being trapped on the island, the novel graphically demonstrates the boys’ descent to tribal and barbaric violence, with the brutal killing and torture of one of their own. Upon being rescued at the end of the novel, the boys, who have become savage-like, cry and lament the end of innocence.

Hexwood

In the small village of Hexwood, a girl named Ann notices strange events taking place in the farm estate – people are observed entering the building, but no one leaves. Intrigued, Ann explores the woods behind the farm estate only to discover an entirely different world in the woods. She meets an old man named Mordion Agenos whom she saw entering the farm estate a few days earlier, yet he claims that he has been asleep for centuries. In a strange twist of events, Mordion creates a little boy, called Hume, from a mixture of his own and Ann’s blood and they run into a run-down android called Yam. Still in the bizarre world in Hexwood, the group finds themselves threatened by the politicking of mythological figures – Orm Pender the Dragon, King Ambitas, Morgan La Trey and Sir Fors. The medieval fantasy-esque narrative draws to a close with the conventional slaying of the dragon, yet the text throws another plot twist – the entire Hexwood village and the woods have had its reality warped and constructed by Yam, which turns out to be a sentient cyborg designed to build such scenarios to choose the next five Reigners, people who will rule the Galaxy in a fair and just manner. Continuing with the mythological thread, Hume turns out to be Merlin and Ann’s supposedly mundane brother saved the day when he slayed Orm Pender.

For my choice of texts, I’m torn between Ender’s Game and Hexwood because of the varyingly rich possibilities the two texts offer. Hexwood is tempting because the text’s playful treatment of mythological figures would help make mythology, a common trope in canonical English Literature, more accessible to students. However, I would go with Ender’s Game as it provides the platform for the discussion on ethics and what it means to be human, since it poignantly depicts the plight of the annihilated alien ‘Other’ through the lens of their destroyer. Arguably, such issues can be discussed using most postcolonial texts. However, the defamiliarised setting and the extremity of the destruction of the Other, coupled with the fact that the narrative is told from the perspective of a child, would help situate the text within the students’ realm, making the issues more immediately relatable to the students.