In this week's discussion with my reading group, we talked about how the process of Graff's decision to make Ender progress so quickly, how it has caused Ender to lose all his friends, how a new launchie named Bean has much more confidence than Ender, how there will always be competition in the real world no matter what, and how Battle School is like school in the US.
I think that there is one main idea that is very important that we talked about and it is the combination of Ender losing his friends because of being too smart, and the competition in the world. Ender loses his friends because of how smart and how talented he is. Because Ender is considered with such high respect by everyone, people who used to be his friends don't think that they have the place or the caliber to be Ender's friend. They also think that he may be too dignified to have friends like him. Ender's consequence of being such an excelled student is that he cannot have friends. It isn't that he is incapable of having them, but it's a combination of people unsure of being his companion and his own awkwardness and his lacking of knowledge of how to created friends.
Ender's situation is similar to those that people experience in the real world. In the world we live in, everyone has a goal they want to reach, whether it is winning a game or getting the best grade. Those who are the best, who are above anyone else in acquiring this goal, will be hated, respected, envied, and avoided. Because of this isolation, even if they wanted to make friends, they would become socially awkward and wouldn't have the ability to communicate or incorporate themselves into conversations like Ender couldn't.
These were the two main things I wanted to add to the conversation we had, but wasn't able to because of time issues.
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