Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Speaker for the Dead uses some bizarre sci-fi concepts to explore important moral issues—hitting the nail on the head on some, but muddying the waters on others.
This is not a review. See why. This article contains spoilers
Context
Alexander is a Speaker for the Dead renowned throughout his interplanetary society. When someone dies, he (or another of the same vocation) travels to where the deceased lived and talks to the people who knew him or her. Once the Speaker understands the person’s context and decisions, he gathers the community for a Speaking. This is referred to as “speaking their deaths”; in them, he tries to illuminate the dead person’s life and actions, and especially the motives behind them.
Alexander is called to Lusitania, a small Portuguese-speaking Catholic colony, to speak the deaths of three people: two beloved xenologers (scientists who study the behavior and social interaction of aliens) and a mine worker. The xenologers were studying an intelligent race of small humanoid aliens colloquially known as the “Piggies” who lived on the planet where Lusitania had been established. Each was killed after discovering a huge secret about the Piggies. The mine worker, by contrast, was the abusive husband of the colony’s biologist and the father of the current apprentice xenologer.
The interplanetary government, the Starways Congress, has placed strict restrictions on the xenologers’ interactions with the Piggies, forbidding them to share technology or any information about human society. When congresspeople learn the xenologers have broken these restrictions, the government comes down hard on them, isolating the planet from resources and communication with other worlds. It’s up to Alexander to negotiate a treaty with the hitherto poorly understood Piggies to bring the rational beings of the planet together so they can thrive and stand up to the power-hungry Congress, which is threatening the colony’s destruction if they do not comply with its unreasonable demands.
Side Note
Many people warned me that this book, which is billed as a sequel to Ender’s Game, is very different from it, and I wholeheartedly agree. It features a large cast of characters (perhaps too large), only three of whom were in the first book. It is not a dystopia, though the government is not exactly liberty-loving. It emphasizes empathy and community, whereas Ender’s Game emphasized the power of independence, creativity, and reason to defend humanity. It explores ways of viewing strangers and those from other cultures, whereas Ender’s Game had focused on gifted children and self-esteem. I found Speaker for the Dead to be more thought-provoking, but ultimately disagreed with this “wiser” Alexander on many issues.
Key Ideas:
We cannot understand a person’s motives without understanding his context
The truth improves lives and relationships in the long term
Human nature is the basis of rational morality
We cannot understand a person’s motives without understanding his context
Much of Alexander’s work depends on gathering enough information to fully understand the deceased’s reasons for acting as he or she did, especially when those actions hurt others or set him apart from others. This requires understanding his context. For example, the mine worker whose death he’s called to speak, Marcão, married a woman the other villagers found cold, distant, and proud. What was the attraction? She stood up for him when they were children and the others were using him as a scapegoat. Alexander eloquently shows the villagers that few of them fully understood why Marcão had acted as he did—even when their actions contributed to his motives. As one of the village teachers comments, “They came for gossip, and he gives them responsibility” (213).
Though it is essential to understand a person’s motives if we are to understand him or pass moral judgment, we must remember a person has at least some choice in how to respond in almost all circumstances. Context enables us to understand why a person acted as he did, but an understandable reason does not necessarily make the act right. Some murderers had horrific childhoods; that doesn’t excuse their crimes. Unfortunately, Alexander does not demonstrate this last point, instead tending toward moral relativism. For example, when a Calvinist student says “I thought Speakers didn’t believe in sin,” Alexander replies, “You believe in sin, Styrka, and you do things because of that belief. So sin is real in you, and knowing you, this speaker must believe in sin” (31). This is nonsense; a person can understand what someone means by a word so as to understand other people’s behavior without accepting the existence or moral correctness of those concepts. Empathy is valuable, as Alexander demonstrates by repeatedly being empathetic and being welcomed by people who initially disliked him. For example, when he encounters a young boy, Grego, who’s constantly getting into trouble, he explains to the boy’s family what Grego is suffering—and he responds by bursting into tears and clinging to Alexander. But when empathy turns into moral agnosticism, it leaves us unable to react appropriately to good and evil, and we sacrifice justice in the name of tolerance. As philosopher Ayn Rand put it, “When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you—whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?”1
The truth improves lives and relationships in the long-term
Often in the course of his work, Alexander discovers—and subsequently shares—truths others would prefer to keep hidden. He reveals abuse, adultery, shame, and more. This often causes a lot of short-term pain, but it is healing in the long term. When people live with a lie, they are living with an imitation of the world rather than reality. So the lie repeatedly conflicts with other things they know. Even if they don’t think about it consciously, that lack of cohesion alone will nag at their subconscious. It may even manifest in more obvious ways, such as Marcão’s abuse toward his wife, Novinha. When the truth is revealed, it relieves the tension between the lie and reality, and people can feel more at peace, more able to deal with the world. And though a revelation may initially cause tension in a relationship, both parties can connect more fully and deeply when facts are out in the open because they better understand each other. For example, Novinha is able to comfort her children in a way she hadn’t done for years after Alexander speaks Marcão’s death, because they learn why she’d married the father who’d made them miserable. Though at first some of the kids are upset, the truth heals their family. The oldest daughter tells her mother, “without anybody even guessing, the poison of your lies hurt us all. I don’t blame you, Mother, or him. But I thank God for the Speaker. He was willing to tell the truth, and it set us free” (237).
Another example that’s central to the plot is the great secret the two xenologers each discovered that led to their deaths. Novinha had an idea of what it was, and she knew it had somehow caused two men to die, but she didn’t know how. So she does everything in her power to stop anybody else from discovering it. Alexander, once he understands the situation, begins to ask the questions everyone else was afraid to and helps them uncover the connection. Once it’s understood, he helps them find a solution so that nobody will die because of knowing that secret ever again. He is able to do all this not by hiding the truth, as Novinha had done with the best of intentions, but by discovering and sharing it.
Spoiler warning: do not read the following section if you have not read the book and wish the aforementioned secrets to remain secret until and unless you do.
Human nature is the basis of rational morality
There are certain heinous acts—killing foremost among them—that are almost universally held to be deeply wrong. Many people find it abhorrent, even without religious commandments against it or understanding reasons to avoid it. There is a rational argument against killing innocent people; briefly put, it’s because life is what makes values, morality, and actions possible. Unjustly extinguishing another’s life is the ultimate crime—the ultimate rights violation—because it deprives him of everything.
But what if that weren’t so? What if we lived on this earth, still able to communicate with our loved ones, in another form after we were killed—and that life was as rich or richer than this one? What if we looked forward to that other life? That would be a dramatic change in human nature and society. I’m not talking about a religious heaven or reincarnation, but a thought experiment Orson Scott Card plays out via the Piggies.
The Piggies are human in the fundamental sense: they’re animals who use reason to understand the world and survive, which enables them to develop and learn languages, make tools, and so on. Yet the males have a three-part life cycle; the first part is a larval stage, whereas the second form is the closest to that of a human. When a Piggy in the second stage of life is “killed,” he grows into a strange tree-like creature that can sire children and communicate with the humanoid Piggies via the “Father language.” The Piggies develop a ritual that minimizes the pain and eases the transition, and it’s done with their consent. For them, what looks to us like killing another Piggy isn’t wrong when done via the correct process (which they can’t perform on their own)—it’s an honor that enables him to move to the next part of his life. The Piggies look forward to their third life, when they are wiser and still able to communicate with their brothers.
This is a truly bizarre sci-fi thought experiment, but it shows a moral point very clearly: For something as fundamentally wrong as killing an innocent to change from bad to (in certain cases) good, the nature of the species and the context of the act itself would have to be entirely different. In other words, the story hints at the vital fact that morality is grounded in human nature. Though Card doesn’t draw out this implication, it suggests that if we want to understand rationally and objectively what is and isn’t morally good, we must use human life as the standard and seek to fully understand human physical and psychological needs. Similarly, Alexander was only able to connect and negotiate with the Piggies when he understood the nature of their species.
Conclusion
Speaker for the Dead uses some bizarre sci-fi concepts to show the value of understanding a person’s full context and the truth. Though it sometimes leaned dangerously toward moral relativism and overplayed the importance of community, it was certainly a fascinating read.
Ayn Rand, “How to Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society,” The Virtue of Selfishness, (New York: Signet, 1964), 82.