Metamorphoses in Enders Game and Riddley Walker essays

Metamorphoses in Ender's Game and Riddley Walker essays Metamorphoses and transformation is a common theme in science fiction, particularly since its speculative nature may make it that much easier to consider novel scenarios and changes unlikely in more traditional fiction. This theme is dealt with in a relatively practical fashion in the two science fiction classics Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. In their process of developing from childhood into adulthood, the protagonists of both these stories stand at a cusp of vital change, and essentially live the death of an entire way of life and being. Each reacts to this loss by recreating themselves anew from a synthesis of old and new, paradoxically coming into their own and overcoming their enemies by melding with them to form new, stronger selves. Perhaps the most important thing to realize when approaching these two books is that in both cases the main characters are children. The entire point of Ender's Game, of course, is to deal with the subtle way that brilliant young children can be unknowingly forced into superseding the evil of adults. The youth of the protagonist is such a major plot element that it is not at any risk of being forgotten, however it is so prominent that it may be at risk of being ignored when it comes to understanding the more subtle points of the work. In Riddley Walker, the protagonist is portrayed as being a man from the very beginning, and one recalls that the very first page describes "my naming day" on which he becomes a man. Yet he is a very young little man, just twelve years old, and even by the end of the book he's hardly a month past that. Though he is treated both as a sexual and a philosophically equipped adult, there is no doubt that to our modern eyes he must still be a child in many ways, and this book is the story of his slow transformation into an adult. In both cases, the transformation int...