Ender's Game Vs Brave New World

Another book that is similar to Brave New World is Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Ender’s Game, while not explicitly dystopian, is influenced by dystopian themes. The International Fleet, the government of Ender’s Game, is oppressive and manipulative, and deliberately withholds information from the its people, a central feature of dystopian literature. Ender’s Game is more significantly related to Brave New World through the themes of isolation and the prominence of youth.

In Ender’s Game, the main character, Ender, experiences extreme isolation when at Battle Camp. He is far smaller than everyone else and is constantly teased and made fun of. Likewise, Bernard, in Brave New World, is also isolated, or at least tries to be. His desire for isolation is inhibited by both a totalitarian government and the pressure for conformity with the rest of society. Bernard, in contrast to Ender, actually craves isolation, stating “It makes me feel as though… as though I were more me… More on my own, no so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body” (Huxley 90).

Another major similarity is the importance of youth and the manipulation of youth. In Brave New World, children are taught at a very young age to be ideal members of society and manipulated to ensure they cannot damage the government or think individually. Babies and toddlers are subjected throughout their lives to hypnopaedia and conditioned to detest anything the government deems “unsafe” for the them to experience. Similarly, in Ender’s Game, Battle Camp students are taught at a young how to battle, while not being informed that they would be the soldiers defending Earth against the third invasion of aliens. In both novels, youth are at the core of the future of society, yet they are still manipulated by their exploitative governments.