Post #5

Cooper Feltes

Speaker for the Dead

On pages 242-295, Andrew prepares to embark on his journey to Lusitania, many, many light years away. Jane, the intelligent life that lives in the network between the colonies prepared a ship for him to travel in (a ship that costs $40 billion dollars, a scratch in Andrews’s wallet). On a side note, throughout Andrews’s life he has been travelling among the stars at near light speed, which slows down the human aging clock for some reason, so much so that ender has been alive for more than 3000 years, but he feels he has only been alive for some 35 years. Andrew’s sister, Valentine, has been traveling with him among the stars as a second Speaker for the Dead, making them both very famous. Valentine is married with kids now, and Andrew doesn’t feel he needs to make them move again. This means that by the time Andrew gets to Lusitania, Valentine and her husband will have probably been dead for a long time, whereas Andrew will have only felt a week’s worth of travel time. Ender is going to have to let go of his Sister, his guardian and mentor, in order to achieve something of significant importance to him. So, like he always does, he packs only his cloths and a few keepsakes into his bags for his short journey that seems like a lifetime to the rest.