The third end of Ender's game successfully wraps up the story by explaining and depicting Ender's never ending training. As he progresses into a new environment and training simulator, he continues to struggle unnecessarily as a young child thrust into the world of military doctrine.
At the start, Ender has taken an extended leave at a lake, refusing to cooperate with Colonel Graff to become a commander. It is through the IF's military hand that Valentine is forced to persuade Ender to become a soldier, adding valuable commentary in the process and justifying the IF's actions (p. 241).
Valentine: I'll tell you something. If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and lose, then it's all your fault. You killed us all.
Ender: I'm a killer no matter what.
Valentine: What else could you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.
The tiger hypothetical at the end suggests that humans are much worse than tigers. Ender believes this because he hates hurting people, whether it be mentally or physically. He fears daily of turning into his brother, Peter. It is this fear that becomes realized if he is to agree to become a soldier.
Valentine's cooperation is also forced, revealing just how far the IF is willing to go to have Ender as their savior.
As Ender is frisked away, he must travel along with Graff in a cargo tug. The tug's captain is told to take them to the military intelligence base against his will. This demonstrates the urgency and the utter extreme to which collateral damage of the IF extends. This is most likely a stab at military leadership in the real world, and their disregard for the lives of civilians.
At the new base, Ender meets the infamous Mazer Rackham, who is idolized early on in the book. As a famed military leader, and now an old and withering man, he teaches Ender all he knows about combat against the Buggers. As it turns out, the single battle that Rackham won had been a complete fluke. He had destroyed the buggers' hive mind queen, disabling all of them. When Ender questions this, Rackham unknowingly describes the IF's relationship with Ender (p. 270):
Ender: So they didn't know what they were doing.
Rackham: Don't start apologizing for them, Ender. Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings.
This easily brings up the moral ambiguity of all the characters in the book. Whether Graff wanted to subject Ender to endless training did not matter. But it happened anyway, easily proving that the IF is no better than the buggers, even if they are not self aware.
Here, Rackham is the ultimate epitome of what a soldier should be: a man who is willing to sacrifice everything for his country and serve with unwavering loyalty. He suggests without a doubt that the Buggers are the enemy only because the IF says they are. He carries on because it is that last thing he has left, even going through time dilation because of his orders. His dependence to the military is reminiscent of the real life counterparts (p. 276):
When I gave myself to starship travel, just so I would still be alive when you appeared, my wife and children all died, and my grandchildren were my own age when I came back. I had nothing to say to them. I was cut off from the people I loved, everything I knew, living in this alien catacomb and forced to do nothing of importance but teach student after student, each one so hopeful, each one, ultimately, a failure.
He confirms this later (p. 277):
I am not a happy man, Ender. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness if we can manage it. So, Ender, I hope you do not bore me during your training with complaints that you are not having fun. Take what pleasure you can in the intricacies of your work, but your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing. When you can give me back my dead wife, Ender, then you can complain to me about what this education costs you.
At the ultimate conclusion of the book, Ender discovers that his simulations were real battles that gave actual orders to real people. The shock puts him into a deep guilt sleep. He has finally become what he dreads: his brother Peter, even surpassing him at his own game with the elimination of an entire species.
At the end, Ender finds an egg of an unhatched bugger queen, and in his guilt, decides to search for a home for the egg.
The final message is that the manipulation of children and the extermination of a species is how the military achieves its goal, regardless of cost.
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