Where Love and Hate Collide
Note on the text: I used Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead as published in 1987 by Tom Dogherty Associates
We may not be angels, but that doesn’t mean that we’re demons. Humans, all humans, have good and bad in them which means that no human is inherently better, or more moral, than another. Even the most evil person in the world has some redeeming qualities. I’m reminded of a story I heard once about Stalin’s granddaughter who said that she had a hard time recognizing her grandfather as the monster that others saw him as because to her he was just the sweet, doting grandfather who always made her feel loved and supported. The truth is not that he was either a monster or a loving grandfather- the truth is that he was both. That is exactly what Ender means when he tells Novinha that
no human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one’s life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts [have] have some generous act[s] that [redeem], at least a little, from their sins (142).
What is true on the macro level about all human beings is also true on the micro level about you and me as individuals. We are more than our worst traits. Often times people struggle with a feeling of shame and embarrassment that causes them to overly highlight their bad qualities while obscuring their good qualities. We have to remember though in those moments that admitting that we aren’t angels does not mean we’re demons. Our good qualities are just as real, just as significant, as our bad ones.
Ela is a character who really struggles with low self esteem. She really struggles to see her own value as a person to the point where at one point in the story she refers to herself and the most ungrateful and cruel child who has ever lived, to which Ender responds:
Yes, you’re ungrateful and a terrible daughter’; he said laughing softly. ‘Through all these years of chaos and neglect you held your mother’s family together with little help from her, and when you followed her in her career, she wouldn’t share the most vital information with you; you’ve earned nothing but love and trust from her and she’s replied by shutting you out of her life at home and at work; and then you finally tell someone that you’re sick of it. You’re just about the worst person I’ve ever known’
She found herself laughing at her own self condemnation (226).
The truth is that when we are open to learning the full story about ourselves or others, it makes it easier for us to empathize and to see things as they really are. One of the things that this open us up to is the possibility of change. Change is possible. One thing that Ela realizes about herself is just how much she has changed as a direct result of the mistakes that she has made. That she “made a mistake, and the mistake has changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate” (231).
We all have good and evil inside of us. No one is inherently better or worse than anyone, and the more that we are able to embrace the human nature that unites us all the better off we will be.
