Harry Potter, Ender Wiggin, Ursula Todd, Jonas of The Giver. Each of these characters from books and movies have two main traits in common: they are the Chosen One, the character that the entire plot surrounds, the owner of some unique quality that allows them to succeed in the story’s biggest problem and they are all also children. The reason for the “Chosen One” concept is not too difficult to figure out: the story has to have a hero, someone to talk about. The question I would like to focus on is if, hypothetically speaking, these “Chosen Ones” have a choice in their destiny and how their decisions made as children contributes to that choice or lack thereof. I will mainly be focusing on Ender Wiggins from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Ursula Todd from Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life. Both of these novels portray the main character as a child for a large portion, if not the entirety, of the story. This is because each character was actually “chosen” before his or her birth. Therefore, due to the outside forces controlling each character’s destiny before they were even able to make a choice, their position as the “Chosen One” is involuntary however it is vital for the story that each character believes he or she is making the choice to accept his or her fate.
Ender Wiggin is the child protagonist of Ender’s Game. From the very first chapter the reader is aware that Ender is special, as the unknown narrator says within the first sentence of the novel, “I tell you he’s the one.”[1]At the time of the conversation and the beginning of the novel Ender is only six years old. Later, Ender is given a choice whether to go to the training school that will be his home for years to come in order to train to become the world’s savior. The conversation between young Ender and Colonel Graff of the school is interesting, as Graff states, “But for Ender, the choice has not been made at all,” indicating that Ender truly has a choice in his destiny.[2] However, it is revealed that Ender was “commissioned” as a hope for the perfect tempered person to command the attack fleet against the incoming alien enemies.[3] This concept in the future setting of Ender’s Game is that no family can have more than two children unless commissioned by the government. Therefore, Ender was created for a purpose, that purpose hopefully being to destroy the incoming aliens.
Likewise, Ursula Todd’s purpose, though not realized until nearly the end of her novel, is decided arguably before her birth. Since Ursula’s “power” is the power to be reborn an unknown amount of times, it is difficult to say when her destiny was decided. Additionally, unlike Ender’s Game, we are unaware of the powers who rule over Ursula’s destiny. We do not know why or how she was given this ability, or if others possess the same ability. Given this information, can we really say Ursula has a specific destiny at all? She decides that she is a witness[4], but is that truly her destiny, or just her perspective of it? In this case, it would appear that Ursula does have a choice in her destiny, as she decides she is a witness. Additionally, throughout her many lives she makes different decisions that may or may not lead her to the outcome of killing Hitler. The perspective of the “Chosen One” may be exactly what is needed for them to make the right decisions. Are they really chosen or special if they are not given the freedom to make the decisions that in turn make them that one special individual who can accomplish the task at hand?
When given the choice of whether he wishes to go with Colonel Graff or not, Ender gives three different answers, with Graff only accepting the last: “I’m afraid but I’ll go with you,” “It’s what I was born for, isn’t it? If I don’t go, why am I alive?” and finally, “I don’t want to go, but I will.”[5] The novel depicts children that are above normal intelligence, which accounts for Ender’s reasonable and well thought out responses even as a six year old. The first response is nearly identical to the last one that Graff actually accepts, so why does he not accept this first response that acknowledges Ender’s fear at going to battle school? Even in children fear is not enough reason to justify actions and decisions. As the “Chosen One,” Graff could not accept Ender’s agreement to join the battle school if it was out of fear, because that would mean that Ender felt like he did not have a choice lest he be seen as a coward. He needed to make the decision truly because it was the right thing to do. Ender’s second response relates directly to the idea that Ender’s existence is not under his own control. This too is rejected by Graff, because Ender does have control. He was brought into existence for a purpose, but no one can make him fulfill that purpose. The final response is the only one Graff accepts because Ender acknowledges that although it is something he does not want to do, he knows he must in order to follow his destiny. So in this case, it appears as though the child Ender though born for a specific purpose has chosen to stay within the path that was laid out for him. However, as he is a child, albeit an incredibly intelligent one, is it possible that he has been manipulated into believing he has chosen this path?
Ursula is a child throughout quite a bit of Life After Life and throughout many of her lifetimes she decides slightly different actions based on a feeling she gets when something bad might be in the realm of happening. Again, she feels as though she is following the right path at the time, as those negative feelings of darkness keep her from straying into the “wrong” paths. However, this too could be a manipulation. While no one other than Ursula is truly aware of her ability, it is possible that her future and past adult mind is manipulating her child mind into following a particular path. This is supported by the fact that the “right” path cannot be determined solely on her not dying, because even in the lifetime that she achieves her goal of killing Hitler she still dies in the end. There is no definitive way to say that her life’s goal is to kill Hitler, because regardless she apparently is reborn even when she does that. Therefore, the children are choosing the path but not entirely of their own will, but rather through the manipulation of adults.
Why is it that in so many of these novels the “Chosen One” is a child? Especially as these books are not exactly children’s novels or even young adult novels. In Orson Scott Card’s added introduction to Ender’s Game, he recalls many adult readers not only struggling to relate to Ender, but actually opposing the concept that a child could think and act the way the children in Ender’s game behave. True, in both Ender’s Game and Life After Life children commit extremely violent acts that confront our typical innocent view of young ones. However, the behavior of these “Chosen Ones” is necessary as part of who they are. Ender is not extraordinarily different from his peers when it comes to violence, as all of them understand the necessity of it in war. However, everyone, even his “jackal” of a brother Peter is surprised by Ender’s outbursts of violence. Ursula also commits violent acts, as everyone is shocked by her pushing Bridget down the stairs. These acts were necessary as chosen ones and also important for it to occur by the hands of children. It shows that even as children these characters are important, unique, rational, and above all else in the right position as “Chosen One.” By making these children commit acts of violence it gives the reader reason to question the child’s maturity and abilities.
Ender and Ursula both exceed expectations in their ability to rationalize. Yes, Ender not only injures other children, but also accidentally kills them. However, his reasoning is exactly why Graff allowed him to continue on into the Battle School and it is the exact reason why we as readers forgive Ender. By hurting the other children beyond their ability to ever hurt him, Ender created a logical path for us as readers to not only forgive him but agree with his side of the story. If he were an adult and knew that he was actually killing his peers, no amount of reasoning would allow forgiveness. It is his adult reasoning in the innocent child mind that allows his violent behavior. Likewise Ursula’s act of shoving Bridget down the stairs, though she cannot reason why she did it at the time, is forgivable because of the innocence behind the act. An adult could not get away with pushing someone down the stairs “because they had a feeling,” but for Ursula, we understand that her feeling is her power leading her down the path of what she believes is her destiny. The ability of Ursula and Ender to reason logically as children sets them apart and allows them to commit acts of violence that otherwise would not be forgiven. However, in these cases it simply emphasizes their “otherness” that makes them “chosen.”
Concerning any outside manipulation of Ender’s destiny is a slew of people. All the government that allowed for his conception as a third child paved the way for his existence and set him up to be different from the beginning. However, there is an unspoken and unwritten suggestion that eggs, sperm, zygotes or something of the type are able to be manipulated. Graff states that the government suggested that Ender’s parents choose a boy this round. This combined with the fact that Peter, Valentine and Ender are all incredibly intelligent, even by their parents’ standards suggests that humans can be created in particular ways at that point in the future. So if the government essentially created Ender, they must have had a particular fate in mind for Ender: to be the next Mazer Rackham, the next war hero against the aliens. So pre-birth Ender already had a set fate. However, it appears as though Ender has options throughout the novel. He could attend the battle school or not, he could become a leader or not, he could accept the positions offered to him by the military or not. These choices make it appear as though Ender has the option whether to follow through on the “Chosen One” path or not. However, seeing as how Ender was created specifically for that task, the mental abilities, temperament and reactions within him were also engineered and manipulated. Therefore, Ender really had no control over his destiny other than to behave the way he was created to behave.
Likewise, Ursula could have been created similarly. Since she appears to have the rebirthing ability throughout time, it can be assumed that she was engineered to retain some memory of her past lives in order to guide herself down a particular path. However, why was her path decidedly leading to the death of Hitler? The lifetime after she killed Hitler, it does not give any indication whether she gets her feeling of dread leading up to shooting him, even though her assassination of him directly causes her own death and those feelings typically occur in order to sway her from death’s clutches. In this case, Ursula’s real destiny is simply as “a witness.” However, she decides this herself and as she is the only one who can control her actions and in theory is the one who creates her feelings of dread from past lives, it seems that Ursula truly is in control of her destiny. However, in reality no matter what she does or how she ends her life she will constantly be reborn. There is no indication if killing Hitler is her destiny, if simply being a witness is her destiny, or if she has no real determined destiny what so ever. Regardless, it is beyond her control to be reborn and that power is what really makes her a “Chosen One.”
The chosen children of novels are important not just for the story they create but for the message they send. It is not just about someone who is just chosen in adulthood, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Genly Ai. The importance of the child creates a feeling of lifelong purpose. It creates the feeling that one is born special, rather than just falling into that role. When reading Ender’s Game for the first time at age twelve I felt I was in Ender’s role. Because of that I felt all the shock and disgust Ender felt when he realized the battle simulations were not just a game, but that he had truly just destroyed an entire alien race. The Harry Potter series created the same sense of lifelong purpose. Ursula Todd was born over and over again into a role that created a unique kind of feeling towards her. By making their main characters children it allows the reader to feel related to the character, because everyone has been in that position in life, but it also creates a sort of otherness feeling towards them. The idea that you are not just born into a role, but that an entire set of events was put in motion simply because you exist is a feeling that all of us try to create but do not typically really feel. That is the captivating part of these novels in which the main character is chosen at or before birth. That strange notion of “I relate to their emotions and thoughts,” while simultaneously wishing to have that sense of purpose in the world. For me that is a deeper meaning in than the novels in which someone leads a “normal” life up until some event that is put in motion regardless of their existence. For Ender, his reactions were seemingly of his own devices, but when you realize that he was created for the sole purpose of destroying an entire species it seems to question if his reactions really are is own or if they are just the product of what the government had created him to be. For Ursula there was the complicated emotion of knowing why she was doing what she was doing, even if she did not fully realize it, but still somehow feeling like she was not in complete control of her situation. She described it best when talking to Dr. Kellet: “Time isn’t circular. It’s like a…palimpsest.”[6] She was able to control little changes in her life, but overall her life would end and begin again. That seems like utter lack of control in all honesty, as no matter what she does she will inevitably, as far as we know as readers, be born into the same world. However, I got the same feeling from Ursula reading Life After Life for the first time as I did from Ender the first time. I understood her thinking, I was in her shoes, confused at the déjà vu and shocked when things did not work out. But there was the overwhelming sense of no relation. I could not relate in any way to her reliving life since, as far as I am aware, I have not been reborn into my exact life. Ursula has a sense of duty and purpose, even if she is creating it herself. The other important aspect as chosen children of novels is that their minds are not restrained in any way. This is something you can get a better sense of in Life After Life, as we can clearly see that when she is a child, she has no concept of where she might go in life but later when she is an adult she seems set in her path. There are less decisions made as an adult than there are as a child. As children it appears that their path is a bit more malleable. For Ursula it seemed that past age twenty or so her life had been decided which way she went: she was either in Germany on the path that would lead her to death or Hitler’s assassination, or she was still in the UK. The idea that the choices we make as children, children who are typically not near as intelligent and understanding as Ender or as supernaturally gifted as Ursula, are the decisions that create the rest of our lives is terrifying, but seemingly not false.
Children in “Chosen One” novels are special, not just to me but in general. They portray seemingly innocent individuals who can commit serious acts of violence but still maintain to loyalty of the reader. They also bring to question whether they have a choice in their destiny or not. In the case of Ender Wiggin and Ursula Todd I believe the answer is no. They were born into their role with the intent to set a series of events in motion just by existing. They also were given the tools to react just as they are “supposed” to by who created them. In Ender’s case he responded to actions in exactly the way the government wanted him to, but with the notion that it was all his idea. With Ursula, she followed in the path her adult self set up for her by creating negative boundaries in directions that would lead her astray from what she felt was her true purpose. Therefore, neither of these characters had true control over their position in their respective stories. I absolutely adored both of these novels and I do not think it was a coincidence that the narrator of both of them was a child, at least for most of the novel. The feeling of possibilities that a child’s mind creates is unique to their young age and innocence towards the world. At the same time, the idea that their seemingly infinitesimal decisions alter not just the path that their own lives take but potentially the very reality that they live in is amazing and terrifying at the same time, and it makes me wonder what decisions I may have made as a six year old that could have led me to the very spot I am sitting in right now.
[1] Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game, pg 1.
[2] Card, Ender’s Game, pg 20.
[3] Card, Ender’s Game, pg 24.
[4] Kate Atkinson, Life After Life, pg 509.
[5] Card, Ender’s Game, pg 26.
[6] Atkinson, Life After Life.