Endgame by Samuel Beckett

When looking at Hamlet, one could say that William Shakespeare put the play together as a very cathartic tragedy. The emotional result of dealing with so many deaths brings on a plethora of emotions which are not usually felt in a typical play. Hamlet begins not with the normal prosperity and good fortune as do most tragedies, but with a more stifling and depressing sort of mood (Tekany 115). However, something else could be said about this play as well. The play centers on Hamlet and his existential characteristics, such as angst, isolation and his confrontations with nothingness. The exhibition of these characteristics proves Hamlet to be an existential character.

     The novel Ender’s Game is written by Orson Schott Card. It is about a young boy who is sent to battle school. He meets friends and makes adversaries. In battle school, out in space, Ender, the young boy is a genius and is taught many tactics to destroy their prime enemy the buggers. He excels in school and battles his way into command school before the required age. There he is told he is battling buggers in simulations or is he? Throughout the novel, Ender is manipulated, bullied, and isolated, which creates many themes and messages. In this novel Ender’s Game the main theme is life is a game. Three characters that best prove this are Ender, Peter, and Bonzo.

In every story, there are many things to analyze. In “Game” by Donald Barthelme, he shows us the way our minds start to work in stressful situations like how the narrator and Shotwell started to respond while controlling the console for the war. In “Game” the narrator’s name is never told, Shotwell and the narrator do not trust each other, but are left alone together and trusted to kill the other if they start to “behave strangely,” although it is never clarified what counts as strange and what counts as normal. Various literary devices are used throughout the story to show us Barthelme’s intended theme, some used are: repetition, symbolism, irony, and figurative language.

Genocide is a term used lightly by tons of people; generally only people who have experienced it are affected by it. This causes many people to turn their backs on mass murders and only have concern for people they know or can relate to. In Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card illustrates one’s journey to speak for the victims of genocide in order to educate others on the implications of this crime. In the article, “The Man Who Coined ‘Genocide’ Spent His Life Trying To Stop It,” by the NPR Staff, the motivation behind the dedication of an individual is shown through helping the victims of genocide. In both texts the authors reveal that the disregard for something such as genocide can inspire certain individuals to take a stand and be even more inspired

THEME: The line between good and evil is sometimes unclear, and as a result, people often think that they are doing the right thing when it is actually the wrong action, and vice versa.

Undermined by dread of another extra-terrestrial invasion, humanity turns to the youngsters to get ready for the approaching war. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is a novel and Ender's Game directed by Gavin Hood is the motion picture based – very loosely - on that novel. So how true to the book were these producers? Translating a 368 page military science fiction novel from 30 years back into a 2 hour film regardless of how well approached will have a few aspects of it hit the fan. With the principle force of the story being fixated on Ender's inward voice and several enormous subplots, a few components are sure to be not true to the book whatsoever.

Chapter 1: Two voices describe how Ender is going to be the one to save the planet from the Buggers. Ender gets his monitor removed and is still an outcast. When Ender returns to school one of the class bullies, Stilson, starts picking on Ender. Ender starts a fight with Stilson and gets him on the ground and continues beating him.

In Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, Ender Wiggin is compassionate, which enables him to connect with people, understand others, and repay his debt to the buggers. Ender is very compassionate since he understands others, even his enemies, like when he gets into fights with other people. For example, when Ender defeats the Giant in the game by scratching his eyes out, he realizes that he is “doing it again…[He’s] hurting other people again, just to save [himself]” (Card 115). The quote shows that Ender does not mean to hurt people like Stilson and Bernard. He just has to deal with them because that is what has to be done. He definitely regrets his actions and wishes that they would just leave him alone so that he would not have to hurt them. This shows

In many novels there are characters that manipulate other characters into doing something they will regret which creates sympathy for the reader. One of these novels is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card as explained in the article The Victim Hero by Alice Miller. In the article, Alice Miller successfully proves that Card creates a deserving sympathy for Ender.

Valentine and Ender’s Relationship in Ender’s Game Relationships are very important to have in life, as it lets people share their lives with someone they care about. In the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Ender Wiggin has a difficult time making friends and connecting with other people. Being a third child is not easy for Ender, because people around him misunderstand and underestimate him, which causes problems in his relationships. In these situations, his sister, Valentine, is the only one who supports him. Throughout the book he faces many problems, mainly isolation.

Imagine that one day we finally discover that we are not alone in this universe, but instead of celebrating or making a contact we unleash a war on these far more advanced creatures. Now the Earth can only rely on young children to fight the aliens and anything can happen if we lose, aliens taking over the Earth or even destroy our planet. This sounds terrifying,but this is a good thought to think about and Orson Scott Card reenacted this idea into a book called The Ender’s Game. The Ender’s game is about a kid, named Ender, who is invited to school where they learn how to fight an insect alien like creatures called “buggers”. Ender develop new skills as he takes a simulation after simulation and destroys the alien

Richard Edward Connell was an American author, who was probably most famous for the short story “The Most Dangerous Game.” Connell started writing at the age of 10 covering baseball games for his father 's paper. By the age of sixteen he had become the editor of the Poughkeepsie News-Press. Connell was a very smart man who studied at Georgetown and Harvard.While at Harvard he was the editorial chairman. Connell 's writing style was usually action-adventure. Some of his works were probably inspired from his time working as a homicide journalist, and serving in World War I. By the time Connell passed away he had published over 300 short stories. Richard Connell was a very unique author from experiences he had through out his life, and so was the writing style that he portrayed.

The buggers from Orson Scott Cards Enders game and subsequent novels, at first appear to be bug eyed monsters, a science fiction cliché. However as the story develops it becomes apparent that the buggers are much more than just a cliché, they develop as a sentient species, they undergo a transformation from varelse, “the true alien” (speaker 34) into raman “the stranger that we recognise as human but of another species”. (34) As this transformation occurs Ender learns a great deal from the buggers, in this manner card illustrates that there is much one can learn from the transformation of varelse to raman.

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett's existential masterpiece, for some odd reason has captured the minds of millions of readers, artists, and critics worldwide, joining them all in an attempt to interpret the play. Beckett has told them not to read anything into his work, yet he does not stop them. Perhaps he recognizes the human quality of bringing personal experiences and such to the piece of art, and interpreting it through such colored lenses. Hundreds of theories are expounded, all of them right and none of them wrong. A play is only what you bring to it, in a subconscious connection between you and the playwright.

Though clearly embodying elements of a revenge tragedy, Hamlet can also be viewed as a work concerning existentialism. Throughout the play, the titular character, Hamlet, demonstrates a struggle with existential angst – the overwhelming awareness of the brevity and seeming meaninglessness of life (MacIntyre). Hamlet frequently reflects on the ultimate end to all life – death – and famously wonders if it’d be “nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or…to die;” his internal battle over his existence is one that can be seen throughout his many soliloquys and manic speeches. After the death of his father and his mother’s hasty remarriage to Claudius, Hamlet finds himself grappling with the reality of his world, feeling lost and without guidance. In the wake of his father’s ghost’s visit, Hamlet is seized by both dread and obligation. His duty to avenge his father is one which jars him; though he devotes himself to its accomplishment, the endeavor forces him to question his morality and fate. Hamlet’s dilemma causes him to lose connection with those around him, leaving him isolated with only his internal crises and quest for revenge. Hamlet’s desolate loneliness – a result of his perceived abandonments – fosters his philosophical ponderings on the usefulness and morality of living in the face of fate and destiny