Title: Peter and Valentine Wiggin in Ender's Game | Shmoop
Headings: Peter and Valentine Wiggin in Ender's Game
Peter and Valentine Wiggin in Ender's Game
Peter and Valentine Wiggin
Devil and Angel
Interlude: Locke and Demosthenes Take Over the World
We’re Not So Different After All

Content: Val is also the one who keeps telling Ender that she’ll always love him no matter what he does. That’s a very nice sentiment, but since he doesn’t have to worry about pissing off his beloved sister, Ender loses at least one reason to act like a nice guy. That is, Ender could pull the legs off ants and Val would still adore her little brother. That’s all a long way of saying that Peter and Valentine are very interesting characters by themselves (and each of them becomes more important in other books that Card wrote); but they’re here mainly just to give Ender something to react to and be compared to. This book is basically The Ender Show, and the rest of his family is like the band that always plays, but that isn’t very interesting otherwise. So Peter is a model for what Ender shouldn’t be because Peter lacks Ender’s great ability to care about the feelings of others. That might make Peter a fine soldier, but not a great leader. And Val is, in some ways, a model for what Ender can’t afford to be – she’s the incredibly caring and loving one. She might make a fine leader, but she wouldn’t be a leader in a war.