Empathy In Ender's Game

The over whelming theme throughout Ender’s Game is empathy. Ender uses this great ability of empathy to eventually become the leader he is destined to be. Starting at a young age, seen through his first incident at school with Stilson, Ender follows a philosophy of winning for all time. Winning just that single battle is never enough for him, to him he needs to finish his enemy completely so he will never have to fight them again. By believing and acting this way Ender is constantly questioning if he is nothing more than just another version of Peter. Ender has to learn that he can never balance his Peter side and his Valentine side. After the destruction of the Hive Queen’s home planet, Ender is given a chance to prove he is not just like
Each time he comes in conflict with someone his answer is always violence, and each time it makes himself question if he is no better than Peter. After getting into the fight with Stilson at school, Ender realizes how he acted reflects the Peter in him, “I am just like Peter. Take my monitor away and I am just like Peter” (8). We see the same reaction again while they are launching, and Ender breaks the arm of Bernard, another launchie: “I am Peter. I’m just like him. And Ender hated himself” (33). After finding Peter’s face in the mirror looking back at him in the fantasy game, Ender reminds himself of how he killed the snake, and how it felt so much like when he had torn the ear off of a boy. It reminded him of the way he had destroyed Stilson, and of when he had broken Bernard’s arm. He believes that the game is lying, that it doesn’t know him. However, when he stops to think about it, he realizes maybe he is: “then a worse fear, that he was a killer, only better at it than Peter ever was” (118). After the destruction of the buggers, Ender realizes that he had been completely betrayed by Colonel Graff. Graff explains to him that it had to be a trick or Ender never would have done it: “We needed a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. […]If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood the buggers well enough” (298). Even though they tried to convince Ender that were the ones responsible, he sees himself as a killer, as Peter. However the Hive Queen gives Ender an opportunity to redeem himself. In his essay “How it should have ended” for Ender’s World, Eric James Stone explains how important it is to Ender, that in finding a new home for the Hive Queen he is given a new sense of purpose and understanding of who he is: “In Ender’s mind,