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Ender's Game and the Matrix - Comparative Essay Practise & Essay Scaffold - Science Fiction

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“In a comparative study of texts we see that the connections between texts are realised through the different textual forms used by each composer.”
How accurate is this statement for the pair of texts you have studied in this unit? In your answer you may like to discuss some or all of the following: form, structure, language features, context, information & ideas.

When texts are considered together, responders realise that texts are connected through their similar themes and ideas displayed in their textual forms. Texts are allegories of human existence which simultaneously examining contextual ideas. This is seen the two texts, the Wachowski brothers’ film The Matrix (1999) and Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s game (1985), through their …show more content…

This idea is represented in the matrix by “The Desert of the Real” and the motifs of mirrors throughout the movie. The reflections represent the confusion toward the blurred line between reality and simulation. Similarly, this idea of the blurred line between reality and simulation is reflected with Cypher’s conversation with Agent Smith. A firm believer in the theory “ignorance is bliss”, Cypher prefers the ‘happier’ simulated life to the truth facing him. By emphasising this simulated environment, the Wachowski brothers allow us to analyse our own dependency on technology for our lives. Similarly, Card analyses this idea of human kind living in a simulacra in his novel Ender’s game. Not knowing the truth, Ender is deceived by his military superiors into believing that the real battle against the buggers was simply a computer game. “Real. Not a game.” After this sudden revelation, Ender cannot cope with his existence, and only finds redemption in religion. In both texts, the composers use textual forms to highlight the idea that computers are used to create a simulation which absorbs the user, hiding them from the realities of life.

Similarly, both texts use defamiliarisation to give representations on gender. The futuristic shifts are used to reflect contextual shifts in gender paradigms. In The Matrix, this is apparent through all the androgynous characters, such as Trinity, Switch and to some

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