Brad Girardeau

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Am I Responsible?

Personal responsibility today faces constant assault. Genetic determinism, a chemical

understanding of the brain, the environment where someone grew up—they encourage the responsible,

the guilty, to shift their burden to inanimate constructs. Yet an individualized view of responsibility,

which focuses on individual actors and their decisions, continues to rule society. In The Politics of

Responsibility, George Lavin recognizes the contradiction this creates. The most pressing problems of

today, the “enduring political urgencies” (Lavin ix), are those like poverty with no single individual

responsible. But an exclusive focus on individual responsibility inevitably gives society a “prejudice

for examining distinct events and against social phenomena that lack clear causal agents” (Lavin xii).

As such, these problems are too easily ignored. With an erosion of personal responsibility, even

problems that before had clear “causal agents” will fall under this category. Two solutions seem to

exist. We can broaden the scope of responsibility beyond the individual and give society a framework

to consider these problems, as Lavin goes on to support, or we can reject the extenuating

circumstances, however valid, that shift guilt from the individual, maintaining the traditional

individualized view. A conclusion in favor of this second alternative must be reached after examining

the characters of Orson Scott Card's series beginning with Ender's Game and their decisions and

consequences. In Card's words, his books explore “the mythic truth about human nature in general”

(Ender's Game xxv), and they show that personal acceptance of responsibility despite mitigating

factors ultimately leads to self-improvement.

The dangers of embracing any collective view of responsibility are readily apparent in the case

of Qing-jao, a character in the series’ third book Xenocide. She makes choices, but at its root,

everything is an act of the gods. Because of this, she does not feel the burden of her own actions; her

only responsibility and her only struggle come in obeying the gods. When all credit and blame truly
travel upwards, no guilt motivates her to improve and to fully consider her actions.. As she meets the

standard moral test of the series, xenocide, she has no qualms with killing, remarking “Maybe Ender

also was the servant of the gods” (Card, Xenocide 310), in reference to the decision of the series'

central character, Ender, to destroy another species. Qing-jao is also easily manipulated. What she

perceives as gods is in fact the product of genetic manipulations causing obsessive-compulsive disorder

like behavior along with increased intelligence, allowing their intelligence to be easily controlled by

Starways Congress, humanity's governing body. When this truth is revealed to her and she receives an

opportunity to change, she cannot take it, regarding it as another lie the gods have sent to test her. Her

rigid belief in a system that removes all independent action and responsibility from the individual at

best removes the incentive to improve and at worst effectively enslaves its adherents.

In contrast to Qing-jao, Ender’s encounter with xenocide is based in deception, and he deals

with it differently. He fights the Formics, or “buggers,” another species believed to be humanity’s

mortal enemy. To defeat them, he must empathize with them enough to truly understand them,

seemingly more important in Card's view than the will to strike (Doyle 8). To circumvent this

necessary weakness, the adults do not tell him he is actually fighting. Instead he believes the battles to

be computer simulations. When the moment arrives to annihilate another sentient species, committing

xenocide, Ender does not know he makes the choice. In this moment, tired of training, he directs a

strategy to prove himself too brutal for command. But this path is in fact the sole route to success.

Devastated with his decision, he shows none of Qing-jao's nonchalance, even as his teachers offer:

You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly

but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We're responsible. (Card,

Ender's Game 298)

However logical this explanation, Ender never relinquishes the responsibility and associated guilt that

this choice, taken in ignorance, gave him. He ignores the complexity of the decision, which his training
led to and which he did not understand the consequences of, and places the responsibility entirely on

himself.

Three thousand years later, admittedly only a few decades for him due to the relativistic effects

of star travel, Ender still carries the burden. He discovers that one Formic queen cocoon was saved

from destruction, which he carries with him on his travels in search of a new home for her. Even this

hive queen tells Ender:

<We know who killed us, and it wasn't you.>

It was me.

<You were a tool.>

It was me.

<We forgive you.>

When you walk on the face of a world again, then I can be forgiven. (Card, Speaker for

the Dead 70)

The guilt he took on as commander at a remote asteroid base drives his identity: “It was me,” and

presumably still is. He did train for half his life, was born even, to fight the Formics. While others can

know his innocence or guilt—for the majority of humanity would later consider him a criminal even as

they originally deemed him a hero—Ender does not accept their view. He had been isolated and

indoctrinated in self-reliance as part of his training, so how could he accept the judgment of others

now? As Graff, Ender's teacher, reminds his second-in-command Anderson, “He [Ender] can never

come to believe that anybody will ever help him out, ever” (Card, Ender's Game 38). Ender's isolation

forces him to adopt this deeply individual view of responsibility. This then motivates him to correct

what he views as a mistake as best he can by ensuring a Formic queen can “walk on the face of a world

again.”

Graff, in charge of Ender’s military training, is equally responsible for the outcome of

humanity's battle with the Formics. He molds Ender into the ideal commander of the fleet that fights
them, and this training undoubtedly led to the “success.” It required deciding on the correct pace and

type of training for Ender, as well as other potential child commanders. On one occasion, Graff decides

to modify the central training tool of the school. Anderson expresses concerns about the idea, saying he

will contact Graff's superiors. Graff rebukes him, calling him “such a short-sighted little bureaucratic

bastard that you think you need to cover yourself if things go wrong” (Card, Ender’s Game 98). Graff

recognizes the choice between avoiding responsibility, through bureaucratic maneuvering in this case,

and ensuring the correct course of action. He is in the position to make the decisions, so he will make

them to the best of his abilities without shifting the weight onto others less qualified. This burden does

not come lightly. He infuses humor into it with statements such as: “A little private moral dilemma.

Please overlook it. I was tired” and “My eagerness to sacrifice little children in order to save mankind

is wearing thin” (Card, Ender’s Game 155), but his sarcasm acknowledges the difficult choices he must

make. It is a choice in itself to embrace a personal feeling of responsibility for Graff, showing that

isolation like the type Ender underwent is not the only method of fostering the philosophy. This let him

take the risks necessary for success regardless of others' opinion. He would later face a court-martial

for his more controversial decisions, such as nearly letting another student kill Ender, where a

companion advises him to use the defense “I did it the way I did it, and it worked” (Card, Ender's

Game 299). The choice also means he works tirelessly after the war to ensure the safety of the children

he created through his training, motivated by a sense of responsibility for them (Card, Shadow of the

Giant 162). He becomes Minister of Colonization, spreading humanity out to far-flung worlds, and

uses this position in Shadow of the Giant to offers his prodigies positions at the head of new colonies,

where their talents can be used peacefully and constructively (Card 91). He even uses his influence to

research a potential cure to a life-threatening genetic disorder only one child, Bean, has, which all

involved admit is unlikely to exist.

One beneficiary of Graff's colonization program was in fact Ender, who eventually ends his

travels on Lustinia, a colony world home to the only other sentient life discovered, the Pequinoes, or
“piggies.” There he meets Novinha, who bears a striking resemblance to him. On first seeing her

picture, he thinks:

Then, when he knew that he had killed all the buggers in existence, when he understood

the act of xenocide that he had unwittingly committed, that was the look of his own face

in the mirror, bearing guilt too heavy to be borne. (Card, Speaker for the Dead 64)

Her crime was killing Pipo, her adopted father, which she committed in ignorance as Ender did. No one

actually understood the reasons for his death. Novinha only knew that after Pipo saw and understood a

genetic simulation she made, he visited the Pequinoes, who then tortured him to death. In addition, she

was almost completely isolated from the community, like Ender, and so relied on her individual

judgment more than the communities (Card, Speaker for the Dead 7). While no outsider would ever

hold her responsible, she still took on the “guilt too heavy to be borne.”

Despite their similarities, Novinha's guilt drives her onto a path of self-destruction instead of

Ender's self-improvement. While Ender must undo his crime as best he can, Novinha's actions illustrate

one of the downsides of individual responsibility. She attempts to destroy all of her work that led to her

discovery and restricts access to everything that can’t be deleted (Card, Speaker for the Dead 50). She

thinks:

I killed him, don't you see? I don't deserve consolation. I want to suffer whatever pain

might come. It's my penance, my restitution, and, if possible, my absolution; how else

will I clean the bloodstains from my hands? (Card, Speaker for the Dead 49)

Pipo had a son and apprentice, Libo, who Novinha had planned to marry. But as her husband, he would

have access to all of her files, could make the same discovery that Pipo made. And the perfect

punishment arises, as Novinha realizes, “Wasn't the guilt for Pipo's death already more than she could

bear? To marry him would be to murder him. And not to marry him would be like murdering herself”

(Card, Speaker for the Dead 55). She decides not to marry Libo, building a web of deception and

retribution that infects her family until Ender comes to unravel it and heal decades later.
 But Ender and Novinha still work tirelessly to correct their perceived crimes. It seems the

repentance even intensifies because they were blindsided by them. The rest of Ender's life is

fundamentally a reaction against his near annihilation of the Formics. Even if Novinha spectacularly

fails, her existence derives from ensuring Pipo's fate befalls no one else. Ender summarizes Novinha's

life in perhaps the book's most powerful line: “She suffered everything, did all this for one purpose: to

keep the piggies from killing Libo” (Card, Speaker for the Dead 270). For in a bitter twist of irony,

Libo has just met the same fate as Pipo at the hands of the “piggies.” But despite this failure and

arguably negative consequences from her guilt, she still attempts to atone for her actions by being

better, by insuring they don't happen again. The negative outcomes can be pinned on her ignorance of

what precisely caused Pipo's death and what it actually meant to the Pequinoes, not on her stubborn

insistence of sole responsibility. A positive outcome then seems to necessitate informed action. With

guilt involving “self-punishment as a form of reparation along with the readiness to submit to attack or

to other punishment from others” according to P.S. Greenspan (289), the guilty must have some

knowledge of the effective form of repentance since “self-punishment” and “submission to attack or to

other punishment” can so easily lead to punishment for punishment’s sake. After all, in Ender the same

emotions that devastated Novinha lead to successful reestablishment of the Formics and to a drive to

prevent future xenocides, certainly beneficial for the conscience of humanity and the lives of other

species.

Graff's responsibility ensures similarly positive results, perhaps even more so since he began

with an understanding of his choices instead of one only gained later. He already accepted any guilt or

burden that might arise, fiercely defending his right to make those decisions. As a result, he can avoid

the failure of Novinha to control herself in spite of the burden. He can accurately target his responses to

ensure the safety of the children he created through his training, motivated by a sense of responsibility

for them and a clear purpose. Responsibility or guilt is critical as a motivator, but the individuals must

couple it with adequate information if they will be effective.

 In all three of these cases, the characters hold themselves uniquely responsible for their actions.

Unlike Graff, fully aware of his decision-making position, Novinha and Ender cannot relinquish their

personal guilt for actions even committed in ignorance. It is one of the problems Greenspan tries to

address in his essay “Subjective Guilt and Responsibility,” seeking to explain how guilt can function

even in cases where no judgment of responsibility can clearly be reached. He seeks to “support the

general conclusion that detaches grounds for guilt from grounds for blame” by exploring several

theories describing it (Greenspan 287). Arguing guilt can occur regardless of whether one consciously

blames oneself, he favors a “nonjudgmentalist” theory of guilt, which allows for this separation by the

fact one can feel guilty without consciously blaming themselves. In Novinha and Ender’s case, the

traditional judgmentalist account instead dismisses their guilt as irrational, pointing to the alternative

theory as more effective. In a society that shies away from assigning responsibility in cases like those

of Ender, Novinha, and Graff, they embrace their guilt in a deeply individual manner regardless of

society's blame. And through them, it becomes clear responsibility and indeed guilt drive the

improvement of individuals, although they must combine it with enough knowledge to know what

aspects of themselves could use improvement.

Responsibility reveals itself as both necessary and complex, intertwined with related

conceptions of guilt and blame. But even as the situations encountered in the book show the complexity

of responsibility, they also imply that oversimplifying it produces good results. Instead of abstractly

weighing the various components of a decision, which might all technically share some culpability, the

characters hold themselves personally responsible. This works in the contemporary world as well.

While testifying at the House of Representatives, Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota, said, “In the past

few months our customers have started to feel uncertain about the safety of Toyota vehicles and I take

full responsibility for that.” Instead of trying to unravel precisely which individuals were responsible

for which aspects of recent product recalls, the admission by the executive allows the company to move

forward and address the safety issues. This does not mean that individual engineers should not also feel
guilty if they played some role. Their guilt would allow them to improve as well, most likely in their

work. But oversimplification of the related blame does not work this way. President Barack Obama

warned in a speech to graduates, “Throwing around phrases like 'socialist' and 'Soviet-style takeover;'

'fascist' and 'right-wing nut' may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government,

or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes.” These labels are too often

used to assign blame for any undesirable situation, allowing the individuals using them to avoid

responsibility themselves. It produces no benefit for them and no benefit for the people they blame.

Those blamed typically will not accept responsibility imposed on them by someone, especially when

hostile, unless they already feel guilty themselves. After all, Ender and Novinha refused to listen to

those telling them not to blame themselves. This complicates the implications of personal responsibility

in the area of criminal law. The idea of greater personal responsibility does not directly translate to

punishing others, truly a form of blame. Nevertheless, laws often encourage the adoption of morals, or

“social norms,” something Robert Cooter examines in his essay “Do Good Laws Make Good

Citizens?” (1581). So holding individuals responsible for their actions makes sense in that context,

maintaining personal responsibility as a “social norm,” but it illustrates the fragility with which

personal responsibility applies to interpersonal interactions. While it is impossible to force personal

responsibility on someone, it remains necessary for the smooth functioning of society and improvement

of individuals.
 Works Cited

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. New York: Macmillan, 1994.

---. Speaker for the Dead. New York: Macmillan, 1994.

---. Shadow of the Giant. New York: Macmillan, 2005.

---. Xenocide. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

Cooter, Robert. "Do Good Laws Make Good Citizens?" Virginia Law Review 86.8 (2000): 1577-601.
Web. 23 May 2010. <http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1009&context=robertcooter>.

Doyle, Christine. “Orson Scott Card's Ender and Bean: The Exceptional Child as Hero.” Children's
Literature in Education 35.4 (2004): 301-319. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 April 2010.

Greenspan, P.S. “Subjective Guilt and Responsibility.” Mind 1992 101.402 (1992): 287-303. JSTOR.
Web. 26 April 2010.

Lavin, Chad. The Politics of Responsibility. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008.

Obama, Barack. "Remarks by the President." University of Michigan Spring Commencement. Big
House, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 01 May 2010. 26 Apr. 2010 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-
press-office/remarks-president-university-michigan-spring-commencement>.

Toyoda, Akio. "About Toyota | Our News | Akio Toyoda: Testimony to House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform." 24 Feb. 2010. Toyota. 26 Apr. 2010
<http://www.toyota.com/about/news/corporate/2010/02/24-1-testimony.html>.