Exposition
The novel takes place in the distant future. Earth is at war with an alien race known as the buggers. The novel opens with a conversation between Major Anderson and Colonel Graff over their analysis of Ender. Through there discussion they refer to Ender as "The One", meaning the person that can lead the human race to defeat the buggers, and discuss their previous beliefs over his siblings and why they are not "The One". Major Anderson and Graff discuss the threat of the buggers and what they should do with Ender as they say "All right. We're saving the world,after all. Take him" (page 1 ). This states Enders extreme importance to the world's fate and how delicate he is. Their plan is to mold Ender into a leader.
Rising ACtion
Ender gets into a fight with a class mate at his school named stilson, Stilson's group of bullies jump Ender, and in self-defense, Ender brutally beats up the Stilson. Ender demonstrates his Wits and intelligence and the I.F notices this and sends Colenel Graff to recruit Ender. As the battle school ship takes off Ender is regarded as the only intelligent person aboard by Graff. Graff does this to make people hate Ender so that Ender can struggle. Ender learns and observes and rises through the ranks while making several enemies.Ender is extremely successful that he broke many scores and "no one else was remotely close to him" (page 155). Eventually Ender progresses so quickly that he is given his own Army, which is named the Dragon Army. This is incredible because Ender is extremely young for someone to be promoted to being a commander.
Climax
Ender soon makes dangerous enemies such as Bonzo, who fights Ender, and Ender uses his wits to beat him, waht Ender doesn't know is that not only did he brutally beat up Bonzo, but he also killed him. Ender eventually leaves battle school and goes to commanding school, which is astounding due to his extremely young age. This even shocks Bean as he says "Nobody goes to command school until they're sixteen" (page 223). Ender is transferred anyway. Ender is trained to fight the buggers. Mazer Rackham is Enders mentor. Ender is trained through a simulation, but what Ender doesn't know is that the simulation is actually not a simulation. Ender is tricked into fighting a real war, against not Mazer Rackham, but the actual buggers, and what Ender also doesn't realize is that for every ship destroyed, actual human lives are lost.
fALLING aCTION
Mazer still continues to "train" Ender throught the "simulator". While training Ender trains, he has beaten Mazer several times astoundingly. Ender is put through one final battle against Mazer and Ender is outnumbered and also outgunned, but against the odds still defeats his enemy. Ender defeats the buggers by destroying their homeworld and wipes out their species from existance. Now that the war has been one, Mazer and Colonel Graff confess to Ender that Ender had not beat Mazer in a simulation, but he had destroyed the Buggers in real life. Ender realized he had killed living beings and every ship destroyed due to his command where the lost lives of real human beings that were under his watch. When Ender realized what he had just done he had broken down. Ender suffers terrible dreams and his conscience terrorizes him as he thinks to himself "you had to kill the children to get to the end of the world" (page 300). Ender was a person of peace and never liked fighting, and he only fought when he needed to.
Resolution
After the Buggers have been defeated, the people of Earth begin to colonize the planets that were previously colonized by the Buggers. Ender is looked to as a war hero by the humans. Ender is called the governer by many, but in reality he is only the judge over people's crimes and quarrels. Other colonies form and the planet Ender is now on is named, "Ender's World". Ender cannot return to Earth because his brother Peter has now taken it over, and if Ender returns, Peter may try to use him. Ender discovers the crysalis of a bugger queen and discovers that during the first invasion, the buggers had no idea humans were intelligent life and soon after the first invasion, the buggers realized what they had done and would leave them alone. Ender finds out that the buggers are good creature and goes off searching for a new place that the queen can repopulate the bugger species and live happily. Ender says his plans for a settlement as he says he wants it to be "near enough to Ender's colony [so] that the two colonies could trade, but far enough apart that they could be governed seperately" (316). This shows Ender is very considerate in thinking at such a young age. Ender creates a book written as if it was written by the bugger queen and publishes it to share with the people of Earth and the colonies. The book talks about the goods and evils of the buggers and their true innocent intentions and how the buggers were really good beings. The bug soon spreads into a religion with many followers.