Our first Thursday in September for the colloquium I attend will be a discussion on Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. This book is supposed to be a sci-fi thriller of sorts, which while I wouldn't normally pick it up, I have no problem reading. I'm about 80 pages into it and find myself confused. I'm not attacking the author, so don't get me wrong, I just don't understand his writing style. In order to get a better idea of the man that created this work I researched his biography straight from his personal website. He is very incredible, and I very much appreciate what he has to teach, "when he advises young writers that their best education is to try, through reading, to "learn everything about everything," he is [] counseling them to embark on an endless quest that he began in childhood and continues to this day."
My confusion sets in with a mental discrepancy of who he is, an active church member, and the language that is put on the pages. I'm sure I wouldn't be so hesitant in my reading and could more easily look past these occasional words, (which is a personal flaw that I haven't just put it down because of them, but that's another story), but I know the language he's using is wrong and I feel let down that a text I expected to be clean/ for all readers is tainted with unnecessary filth. No, I haven't come across any "big" swear words (which is relative anyway), but I just don't understand why the words that are in there are in there.
There may be no justification available to set my mind at ease, but I'm desperately trying to find one. Is it just common for sci-fi novels to have bad language and so he had to throw some in to even make it a viable novel? Would the publishers not publish the book if it was to clean? I know this is silly, but I'm really having a rough time with this one.
For any of you who are into sci-fi novel or have read Ender's Game, I would really love to get a comment from you to help me out. I know, I'm a baby... but I'm a baby with a really stellar photographic memory which is great most of the time, but gives me a hard time when I see words, and thus hear words in my head that shouldn't be there. And being that this is an LDS author I tend to dwell on the issue for a ridiculously long time, a like so.
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2 comments:
I have read this book and I would encourage you to finish it, in the end I really enjoyed it. I am not one to really love the sci-fi novels, but this one was easier for me to wrap my head around, it wasn't so warped and a whole different world I could never understand. In reference to the language, I do remember that there was a lot of "childrens swear words", like you said not any of the big ones, but still swearing no the less.I think "in the main stream world", if you shoved a bunch of pre-teen BOYS together they would talk that way to try to be more "adult". It was the authors way of showing these insecure children trying to grow up too fast. Not that it justifies all of the language... I feel that Card is LDS, but he was not trying to be an LDS Author. Those are just my 2 bits on all of this, let me know if you do end up finishing and what you think.
Also, I am glad that you are on blogger now, I always tried to leave comments before, but it would give me an error message. So in reference to you older post on McCain I could not agree more!!! I have a pet-peeve when products or people rip on their competitors to make themselves look better. So thanks for that post too, it makes me feel less of a mom and more involved in real life!
Hi Cherie,
We finished Ender's Sunday night. We listened to the Audio version. I don't think I would have stuck with it otherwise.
I think there will be some worthwhile discussions out of it. I too think it's cheap to need to swear. The last book I started to read written by a liberal and using "garbage talk" I took it back to the library and gave it a poor review. Not that my reviews mean much.
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