Identity Quotes in Ender's Game

This is one of our first impressions of Ender. He's just been fretting about how Peter will react to the removal of Ender’s monitor, and now he’s worrying that he might turn out to be just like Peter. From the very first chapter, we see that Ender is almost as scared of turning into Peter as he is about being killed by Peter.

Most of Ender’s identity problems come from his worry that he’s a bully and a killer, like Peter. But here, Ender wonders for a moment about what it would be like to be “like the other boys.” (We guess he means to wonder what it would be like to be just a regular boy – though we should keep in mind that these “other boys” are also Battle School super-geniuses. Not exactly regular guys.) The fact that Ender only thinks about this here – this one time – shows how Ender is really much more worried about whether he’s going to turn out like Peter.

All of Ender’s other games are war games, so of course he’s “killing” when he plays those game. When he plays the mind game, though, he tries not to be a killer. Whoops. When he kills the giant in the mind game, this shows to him (and some of the administrators) that he’s like Peter. (Or at least like Ender’s idea of Peter.)