Comparative Essay Sample: Ender’s Game and The Giver

While both Ender’s Game and The Giver contain very good character development, well written plot that is easy to follow and enjoyable as well as literary devices that were prominent in both of them, The Giver is better at using these ideas. Both Ender’s Game and The Giver are focused around the main character having some kind of realization and doing something because of it. Both the Giver and Ender’s Game were very enjoyable and well written but I believe that the Giver is better in both of these categories.

In both the giver and Ender's Game both of the main characters changed a lot through the course of the story. Their beliefs, roles, and how people saw them. But i believe the Givers development of the charter was superior to Ender's game a good example of this would be in the book the Giver is before the main character (Jonas) started his training as the next receiver of memory he just tried to blend in and be like everyone else, he thought what other told him to think, did what other told him to do and just blind went with the flow. After he had his eyes opened to the true injustice of his community he asked his teacher (The Giver)if there was anything they could do to fix the rules giving people the freedom that he thinks they should have. He eventually ends up deserting his community and faking his own death because he wanted to experience the outside world and all that it had to offer. However in the film Ender’s Game the main character (Ender) does not really undergo a dramatic change such as Jonas did in the Giver but he slowly starts feeling more sympathy and compassion for his enemy the Formens. Near the end of the movies he is having his graduating battle simulation from command school he manages to wipe out their entire species he does not realise this until after images were playing of the Formens home planet turned into an uninhabitable wasteland. He is in disbelief and starts arguing with his commander and has a mental breakdown. They finally return him to his quarters where he releases the formens who were trying to seek a diplomatic approach to the whole and tried to reach out to him many times through a training game he played on his government issued tablet. Soon as he wakes up he sprints out of his room and through doors to a hostile planet far from earth, he recognizes an old structure from his game and runs inside there he finds the last remaining survivor who was dieing. The alien gives Ender the egg and Ender vows to take care of it and find a suitable home for it.

Both The Giver and Ender's game do a very good job utilizing literary devices such as metaphors, irony, and imagery just to name a few. The most prominent literary device in the giver is the author's use of metaphors. Lois Lowry who is the author of the Giver uses metaphors many times to give otherwise meaningless details hidden meaning. Her use of metaphors is one of the reasons I felt the Giver was so engaging and exciting to read. An example of a good metaphor from the Giver would be, near the beginning of the story she made a reference about how Jonas’ eyes were a lighter colour than everyone else’s, when we met the Giver for the first she made reference to how his eyes were lighter like Jonas’. These two people were the only ones who had the capacity to “see beyond” so the light colour of the eyes is a metaphor for being able to see beyond. In Ender’s a metaphor that I found intriguing was the quote "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."(Ender’s Game). After Ender said this it made me wonder if his views changed about himself because at the beginning of the book he thought he was born just to be a soldier and defeat the Formics. At the time I thought the director might be hinting that Ender will find a diplomatic approach, but he did not. At the end of the film he has his final battle simulation where the chance for diplomacy arises, but since he thinks it's a simulation he ignores this and ends an entire species. He has many regrets after this event took place and tried to make amends for the actions he took.

The plot in the Giver was well thought out and was interesting throughout the entirety of the book, giving me something to look forward to page after page. On the first few pages there was a plane that flew over the community so that was pretty exciting but things really didn't become interesting again until ¼ into the book when the ceremony of 12 is about to take place which is where all the children turning twelve that year get their jobs for the rest of their lives. There Jonas gets skipped over and the reader is wondering why this was so letting us guess at what the reason could be. The author does this a lot throughout the book and enjoys this style of writing. Then the plot just keeps getting increasingly more intense for the remainder of the book then near the end of the novel it leaves us on high and we have a question without a definitive answer. The movie Ender’s Game starts off fairly high paced with the main character Ender planning a training game against some he is in school with, then after the other person loses he starts a fight and Ender wins and is sent to battle school shortly after. Then nothing really exciting happens until the last third of the movie but when it picks it up it does so in a big way with preparations for the final battle under way the viewer is left on the edge of their seat waiting for what exciting event will take place next.

Everything that I have touched on over the course of the essay goes into detail of the characters development, the literary devices both Ender’s Game and the contain and are used frequently, and the development of the plot. All of these are essential components of making and good novel or film and I feel that both the Giver and Ender’s Game made full use of metaphors and took advantage of them.