How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
"Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.” (15.104)
And we’ve come full circle (at least in the quotes we pulled for this theme). If being human means having no full freedom, then… Well, what does it mean? Even if humans are confined by lots of different things – school, army, society, family, genetics, feelings – that doesn't mean all of those things are equal. (As in, school can limit your options and your genetics can limit your options, but they don’t limit your options the same ways.) So, Ender can’t escape who he is and can’t escape his memories, but he can leave Earth and go somewhere where he might be free to do other things. According to Val, even if you’re not in total control of your own life, you have some freedom to choose among the options that are open to you. Maybe this is what goes wrong for Ender: he has total freedom and doesn’t know what to do with it. Whereas if he recognized that he had a few options to choose from, he would’ve been able to decide more easily.