The Giant's Drink Symbolism
The Significance of the Giant’s Drink In Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, the “mind game” is a constantly changing computer game made for the students and is used by the commanders of the battle school as a tool to monitor and analyze how the students are feeling. Ender Wiggin becomes increasingly obsessed with the game, specifically after he becomes stuck at the “Giant’s Drink”. At this point, the game seems to hit a dead end, with none of the options for the player to take being the right one and all of them ending in their “death”. The game would then reset itself so that the player might try again, and fail again. The Giant’s Drink is symbolic to many parts of Ender’s life; he sees, in the battle school, that following orders will barely
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He becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that he is getting rewarded for committing horrific acts, such as (unknowingly) killing Stilson and being accepted at the battle school, and killing the Giant and being allowed access to Fairyland. It is possible that he sees the Giant as an image of Graff – a looming figure watching his every move, offering rewards if Ender can meet their secretly gruesome demands, and offering more chances if he cannot. Ender’s morals – while helping him to stay true to himself and what he believes is right – prevent him from seeing the rewards of his actions and keep him focused on the consequences. While this is not necessarily a bad quality, especially in Ender’s case when he is subject to some horrible things, it is simply worth it to note that Ender became distressed after beating the Giant’s Drink, where other students of the school would likely feel a sense of triumph for achieving this. Ender’s ambitions to be the best should have brought this sense of pride in him for doing something that no one else ever had in the game, however his morals caused him to, instead, address the fact that he does not think it is right to be a murderer and he does not see it as his place to deal
He becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that he is getting rewarded for committing horrific acts, such as (unknowingly) killing Stilson and being accepted at the battle school, and killing the Giant and being allowed access to Fairyland. It is possible that he sees the Giant as an image of Graff – a looming figure watching his every move, offering rewards if Ender can meet their secretly gruesome demands, and offering more chances if he cannot. Ender’s morals – while helping him to stay true to himself and what he believes is right – prevent him from seeing the rewards of his actions and keep him focused on the consequences. While this is not necessarily a bad quality, especially in Ender’s case when he is subject to some horrible things, it is simply worth it to note that Ender became distressed after beating the Giant’s Drink, where other students of the school would likely feel a sense of triumph for achieving this. Ender’s ambitions to be the best should have brought this sense of pride in him for doing something that no one else ever had in the game, however his morals caused him to, instead, address the fact that he does not think it is right to be a murderer and he does not see it as his place to deal