Daily Dialogue — September 19, 2016
ENDER: What is this? Why are we watching these images?
GRAFF: Ender…thank you. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Thank God for you, son.
ENDER: Why are these images in the program?
GRAFF: Ender, we won.
ENDER: What do you mean we won? (Looking to Rackham) I beat him. He runs the simulations. He said it was a game.
RACKHAM: It was them or us, Ender. There was no other way.
GRAFF: With this victory, you’ve won all future battles. You destroyed them, for all of us.
RACKHAM: Stand down.
GRAFF: Move, move! Please, move!
RACKHAM: Make a way.
GRAFF: Ender–
ENDER: STAY AWAY FROM ME! You lied!
GRAFF: Son, we were afraid if we told you, you might–
ENDER: What? Refuse to play? I’ve killed an entire species.
GRAFF: They would have done the same to us.
ENDER: No, they waited. What were they waiting for?
GRAFF: Who cares? We lost a thousand men on the transporters you abandoned.
ENDER: I abandoned them in order to win!
GRAFF: YES! And they died proudly for us.
ENDER: They might not have died at all. If I’d known it was real I would have —
GRAFF: What? Called for a dialogue? They can’t even speak.
ENDER: Watched them. What were they thinking? Were they building and army for a second invasion, or…or simply preparing to defend themselves–
GRAFF: Ender, stop.
ENDER: –from us? They came to earth to establish a colony. We chased them away, and in fifty years they never returned.
GRAFF: It makes no difference now.
ENDER: I will bear the shame of this genocide forever.
GRAFF: No, you will be remembered as a hero.
ENDER: I will be remembered as a killer!
GRAFF: It was us or them.
ENDER: And you’re sure we’ve killed every last one of them?
GRAFF: I saw their whole planet destroyed.
ENDER: How do you know there isn’t another colony? Or, another queen out there?
GRAFF: There isn’t! We WON! That’s all that matters.
ENDER: No, the way we win matters.
— Ender’s Game (2013), screenplay by Gavin Hood, novel by Orson Scott Card
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Military Moments, suggested by Will King who also suggested today’s post.
Trivia: “The Earth was ravaged by the Formics, an alien race seemingly determined http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/wp-admin/post-new.php#titledivto destroy humanity. Fifty years later, the people of Earth remain banded together to prevent their own annihilation from this technologically superior alien species. Ender Wiggin, a quiet but brilliant boy, may become the savior of the human race. He is separated from his beloved sister and his terrifying brother and brought to battle school in orbit around earth. He will be tested and honed into an empathetic killer who begins to despise what he does as he learns to fight in hopes of saving Earth and his family.”
Dialogue on Dialogue: Commentary by Will: The climactic moment of Ender’s Game when he learns that instead of conducting a battle simulation, he was actually waging the real war against an alien species, which turns victory into a bitter awareness about what he’s done. Graff had acted as mentor and leader, and at this moment all Ender’s trust in him is wiped away as he comes to the realization that he must now atone for what he’s done.”
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