Orson Scott Card, Xenocide Pg.179-209
Summary:
In this part of the book, I left you off right before they entered the Hive Queens chamber. So now, as they enter the chamber, they see the queen for the first time in their lives. As they, all deal with the first sight of a descendent of the original Hive Queen that once terrorized earth, at least that’s what the propaganda said it would do. Anyways valentine has a hard time trying to overcome here fear of the hive queen only seeming it as the thing that put the earth and her family under so much pressure, especially taking Ender away when he was a child. As they enter, ender explains that that the Hive queen communicates through phiolotic rays, just like the ansible, except your head is the ansible. To put it into perspective, the book compares it to having thought in your head that are created by the Hive Queen and put there, and the same happens when you talk to her. Therefore, the Hive queen talks about her ancestors in the war and how they tried to communicate and take over Ender, but his mind was independence and resisted the Hive queen. So then, they decided to get to Ender by going through Valentine, but she was also too strong. It’s okay if this doesn’t make a lot of sense because this is all referring to the very first book Ender’s Game, it you haven’t read it go read it now. Back to Xenocide, they find out the intentions of the Hive queen to build spaceships to escape the Xenocide of her species and another for the Pequenios so they ca escape too and she can’t be persuade otherwise. Then they leave with their newfound information. Now the book goes into Mire’s perspective and what he was. In a monologue of Valentine’s she talks about how Miro was casualty in love, but then he found out his lover was actually somehow related to him and left him in light of this new knowledge and not cause she didn’t love him. Now to Miro, he goes to church, although he doesn’t believe in god. His lover comes while he is watching the service and tries to talk to him and he makes a scene and leaves. Then in an emotional scene where Miro is sitting by rooter who was a friend to him before his trip, he then talks to his brother. His brother is now a priest of the pequenios and is a great deal concerned about Miro; they fight about religion and how God could let Miro be paralyzed like Job a character in the bible who is deprived of everything and then is later rewarded twofold for his faithfulness. After this, he prays for Miro and tells him of the trouble in the forest. He says that some of the tribes think that the Descolada virus is the Apocalypse and that it cleanses to land of unworthy creature such as the humans. They then go into the woods to try to clear this up.
Vocabulary:
· Carapace
o Animal Shell
o Self-Protectiveness
· Brainpan
o Parts of the Skull Containing Brain
· Quirk
o Odd Event
o Odd Mannerism
o Groove
· Palsied
o Inability to move
o Same as palsy-walsy
§ Palsy-walsy
· Friendly
· Ovipositors
o Tubular egg-laying organ
Response:
Again I’d like to try to reform all these issues in the book, first of all you have the Descolada the talking virus, which is an ethical because it keep the Pequenios alive and in itself dangerous. Second you have the fleet with the Dr. Device that would destroy the entire planet, killing all of the species their, it is not certain whether it will keep the humans alive though, this is also an ethical problem wiping out 2 species 3 including the virus. Then you have the pequeos maybe on the borderline of war and will spread the virus with the help of the Hive Queen, and then you have the Hive Queen, which poses the same dilemmas, but is reasonable, but doesn’t have a good reputation with the humans since the war. This reminds me of a lot of thing in real life, like the Dr. Device clearly a parallel to the atom bomb, and the virus connected to the avian flu, or SARS, or the Swine flu. This book raises very ethical and moral dilemmas, in a certain situation. With all these problems stacked and interconnected, like the web of life where everything is interdependent, I wonder how the author will answer or fix these problems in the book.
