Images

Images

3

There are three sibling in Ender's family.  Three represents light, spiritual awareness, and unity, as well as the male principle.  I think in this book, the three of them represent a balance of some sort.  They all have very similar qualities, such as their ability to gain, maintain, control, and utilize power (Ender with commanding in Battle School, and Peter and Valentine as Locke and Demosthenes).  However, within this power ability, they are all very different.  Peter is very aggressive, and often uses his power to harm others to get his way.  Valentine is calmer, and uses her power with words to manipulate people's thoughts and feelings.  Ender is a mixture of the two, who uses his power to command people as a cohesive group, and to understand how people's minds work so he can get inside of them and use what makes them tick to do what he wants.

Snake

The snake is a symbol of energy and pure force, and represents evil, corruption, sensuality, destruction, mystery, and wisdom.  Ender encounters several different snakes inside his Free Play game.  The first he destroys many times, until he shows it kindness and it morphs into his sister, Valentine.  The second is a group of thousands of tiny snakes who swarm out of a mirror and bite his character to death.  And the third is the snake he sees in Peter's mouth in a reflection in a mirror.  I think these many different purposes of the snake in the book really represent how the snake is a mysterious creature, and the two links between snakes and death or evil represent Ender's feelings on Peter's corruption.

Wise Old Man

The wise old man in the book is Mazer Rackham.  He shows up later in the book, past where I summarized, and his role as Ender's mentor and friend is instrumental to the outcome of the book.  His knowledge, insight, and wisdom teach Ender in a way that is kinder than he was used to, and creative enough that Ender learned new things.  He appeared when Ender was at his lowest low up to that point to provide guidance.

Black

The Battle Rooms that the students at Battle School fight in are dark, to resemble outer space.  As black represents chaos, mystery, the unknown, death, and night, I would say that is a pretty reasonable color to make the battle rooms.  This is because the battle rooms are essentially the place where they train the boys to command armies where people WILL die, and where they WILL kill buggers.  It also represents the chaos Earth's society has been thrown into for them to send 6 year old children to become soldiers.  I would also add that little is known about the bugger race, so they are pretty mysterious to everyone.