Chapter 8 – Rat

Key Events:

• Ender gets traded from Salamander Army to Rat Army. The Rat army’s commander is Rose, a timid and weak commander, who can’t keep everyone in order.

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  Dink Meeker is Ender’s toon leader. He realized Ender’s brilliance when playing in the battleroom, so he used Ender’s ideas while training.
•  Ender keeps the evening practices with his launchies, and teaches them everything he learns with Dink.

   

• Ender has battle against centipede army. He uses his legs for a shield, and holds the gun in between his legs. In the end, Rat army wins, and Ender is still first in the standings, as he froze three, disabled two, and damaged seven. Rose did not speak to him after the game. 
• Ender becomes a proper member of the toon after the battle against centipede army. He started making mistakes, and dropped in the standings, however, after more battles, he went back up to the top.

   

• Dink and Ender chat during dinner, and Ender finds out that Dink refused to be commander twice, as he doesn’t want the generals to control him, to manipulate him. This made Ender think more when people talked to him, and it made him intelligent.

   

• Older boys came in to disturb Ender during his evening practices with the launchies. Ender hurt the boys, and they never came to disturb them again.

   

• Ender played the Giant’s Drink, and in the mirror, saw himself as Peter. He did not want to go play the game again, and tried to convince himself that he wasn’t a killer.

Themes:

Big vs. Small

The Rat Army’s commander Rose also believes that because Ender is small and young, he is useless, and makes fun of him when he joins his army.

Rose says, “I took you on, goy, because I didn’t want people to think I only win because I got great soldiers. I want them to know that even with a little puke of a soldier like you I can still win.”  (72)

Rose says, “With you around, how can any army lose?” Several of the boys nearby laughed. (71)

Appearance vs. Reality

Rose doubted that Ender would do anything useful in the battle, but when the game was over, Ender was the top in the standings, with the results of freezing three, disabling two and damaging seven. Rose was furious.

Rose laughs. “You won’t have time to fire anything, pinprick.”