post #8

p400-447

This, I think, is one of the best and most interesting chapters of any book I have ever read. In these few chapters, Ender(Andrew) is led to the household of Novihna, greeted by a young boy(one of the six or seven children in the family), who grabs a knife from his pants, and lunges at Ender! Ender evades his attack, and grabs him by the arms and legs(Grego being small enough to fit all limbs in one hand). When Ender proceeds to enter, he is welcomed by a "blank and white" household filled with loveless people. Novihna isn't there, but that doesn't mean he can't help the family. After some persuasion, all the while with Grego in his hand, he gets the family to sit down. The only one to really warm up to Ender was Ela-a girl who seemed to be acting as the mother of the family. The father of the family seemed to have died three weeks beforehand, and the family is still grieving. Quim, another child of the family, who hates the fact that the other children have been sharing so much with Ender, ignores him and goes to plug in his bionic eye I mentioned earlier into some machine. Jane dumps, somehow, his memory onto a hologram onto the floor. We then see Miro, the father, beating Novihna. Quim then can't take seeing his horrible memories displayed in front of him, and yells that he killed his father, and doesn't regret it, understandably. He had a fatal skin dissease, but to see a man, "playing it by ear," lead a family intervention. To top it off, Ender discovers that Grego has just been trying to be like his dad, innocently, though it has gotten him in trouble. Ender seems to be really good at what he does.