Ender's Game

Unit Review Sheet

Facts and Definitions

Lesson 1: Born to Genius

• Orson Scott Card developed Ender's Game from a short story version he wrote in 1975 to a novel-length version finished in 1985.
• Card was in school during the height of the Cold War, when Americans regularly practiced civil defense drills such as having children practice "duck and cover" under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack.

Lesson 2: We're People, Not Thirds

• Eugenics is a science based on the idea that society can improve humans by encouraging or forcing people with high IQs or other particular traits to have children (and discouraging those with low IQs or undesirable traits to not have children).

Lesson 3: Science Fiction

• Science fiction is a literary genre that imagines the impact on humans of actual or possible scientific progress or inventions.
• Romanticization means making things appear more attractive or interesting than they would be otherwise.
• Anachronism means using technology or ideas that do not belong to the time period in which they appear.

Lesson 4: Divergence

• Convergent thinking enables a person to identify a single correct answer among limited possibilities.
• Divergent thinking enables a person to produce a creative solution to a problem.
• Divergent and convergent thinking are not mutually exclusive processes. Complex problems require both.
• Ender uses divergent thinking to move past the giant in the game.
• A polyglot is a person who is fluent in several languages.

Lesson 5: Movement and Time

• When a narrator breaks from the present events in a story to refer to an incident or emotion from the past, the writer has used a literary device called a flashback.

Lesson 6: Performance Is Personal

• The Second Warsaw Pact in Ender's Game was named after a real, nonfictional arrangement called the "Warsaw Pact" — a treaty between the Soviet Union and several smaller, less powerful countries near its western border.
• Though the term "pact" denotes the willing participation of each member, some historians note the imbalance of power between the Soviet Union and the other member states.
• The text structure is the way the author orders and arranges information for the reader.

Lesson 7: Leaders Motivate

• Power is simply the ability to do something (it only requires brute force), while leadership is the ability to motivate people to act of their own free will.
• Demosthenes was an ancient Greek speech writer and orator who lived in Athens during the 300s BC.
• John Locke was a 17th century British philosopher who was well known for his theories about politics and government.

Lesson 8: Flies and Self-Loathing

• Comparison and contrast is a set of strategies to analyze works of literature that helps you see patterns and distinctions between characters, themes, conflicts, and more.

Lesson 9: Conflict Within and Without

• An internal conflict is a character's struggle with his or her own evolving values, intellectual limits, emotional crisis, psychological issue, or any combination of these.
• Internal conflicts are problems of the character vs. self.
• External conflicts exist between a character and someone or something in the world outside the character.
• External conflicts are often described as either character vs. character, character vs. society, or character vs. nature.
• Conflicts between characters are known as character vs. character.
• Conflicts between a character and laws or social norms are known as character vs. society.
• When characters struggle with nature or environmental elements, the conflict is called character vs. nature.

Lesson 10: View from Valentine

• Ender's Game is narrated from the third person omniscient point of view.
• A third person omniscient narrator tells a story without being a part of the story and is able to relay the thoughts of more than one of the characters.
• An acrostic is a series of words with a message hidden in one letter of each word.
• A dirigible is a steerable, lighter-than-air craft.
• Albedo is the level of reflectiveness of a surface, particularly the surface's capacity to reflect the sun; ice has a very high albedo while a black t-shirt has a very low albedo.
• An ascetic is someone who is extremely disciplined and often does not indulge in pleasures.
• Impassively means without showing emotion or with indifference.
• A feint is a movement intended to distract or trick an opponent from the real point under attack.

Lesson 11: Thud, Whump, Huut

• When an author allows his or her novel to be adapted to a film, play, graphic novel, or other form of art, he or she or agrees to share and sometimes surrender creative control of the storytelling.
• An onomatopoeia is a word that has been constructed to recreate the sound it is meant to signify; examples include buzz, thump, and swoosh.

Lesson 12: Campbell's Comparisons

• When we consider the traits of heroes, and the commonalities in the structure and themes of their stories, we are conducting an academic exercise called comparative mythology.
• Famed academic Joseph Campbell details the similarities between religious and mythical figures from different cultures, regions, and time periods in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
• Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces is often abridged and summarized into 10-20 easily identified steps. Often, these steps include the following: Ordinary World, Call to Adventure, Crossing the Threshold, Tests, Allies, and Enemies, Reward, Return, Resurrection/New Life

Lesson 13: The Enemy's Gate Is Down

• A subplot is a less important story within a larger story. A subplot usually helps the author make an important point which supports the themes of the main plot.
• Ender's Game has two subplots: Graff's story and the story of Valentine and Peter.

Final Project: Think-Tac-Toe

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