Bean’s Identity Growth as a Leader

Bean’s Identity Growth as a Leader

Orson Scott Card’s book “Enders Shadow,” is about a young child named Bean, who grows up in the streets of Rotterdam, and is delivered from a life of starvation and destitution. Because of Beans extraordinary intelligence he has been given the opportunity to serve the I.F. a space academy.

Bean identity growth as a leader is because of his extraordinary intelligence. Throughout this story Bean controls every situation he is in by his intelligence, and deductive reasoning. Bean is a small four year old child who is starving on the streets of Rotterdam. In fact, ever since Bean was born his life has been filled with many challenges. Bean has no identity, no family, initially name,shelter or food. Everyday Bean would just sit and observe people as they walked by.

Bean was sitting on a trash can observing people when Poke, a crew leader, took notice of him. Poke’s crew consists of children that she takes care of by providing food for them. Bean has been observing Poke and her crew for a long time because he wants to belong to a crew. Bean observes how compassionate Poke is, and notices she does not always think through what she was doing.

Bean begins to show some of his leadership abilities by how he proceeds to tell Poke that she needs to get herself a bully. Poke becomes very irritated at this little boy who she said, “wasn’t worth a bean.” Bean explains to Poke the reason for the bully is so the bully would protect them. Bean further explains that the bully would be able to get them into the Charity Kitchen for food. Poke knew the older kids would not allow the younger kids near the Charity Kitchen, because they would always beat them up. Poke becomes angry with Bean at first, but then she begins to think about what Bean said and thought it was a good idea. As a result, Poke ends up picking the bully Achilles to help out her crew.

Achilles has a gimp leg and Poke thought it would be easy to take him down. Bean was not in favor of Achilles, and told her she needed to kill Achilles and pick another bully. Bean told Poke that if she did not kill Achilles he would kill her. As the story develops Beans impression of Achilles was right and Achilles kills Poke. Not only did Bean help Poke with his insight for her crew for food and survival, but Bean was also a very good judge of character about Achilles.

Bean begins to take charge in Battle School by his desire to gain knowledge. He is very intuitive, constantly thinking, and asking questions that a normal child his age would never do. Beans intelligence and intuitiveness shows his leadership abilities. He has the ability to see the outcome of situations before they would occur. Even in Battle School Bean would observe his surroundings in order to gain understanding in everything as much as possible. Physically Bean is very small and underdeveloped, but mentally he supersedes all the other children in Battle School. Bean knew he could always think and outsmart the other children.

One day after dinner, Bean decides to go exploring on the fleet ship instead of going to bed. Bean wants to have a mental image and understanding of the fleet ship. Bean is amazed how large the fleet is, in fact, the fleet is a lot larger than he thought it would be. Some of the doors have adult size palm pads for access, which meant they were forbidden for children. Bean regards the adult size palm pad as a temporary setback because he knew he could find a way to get wherever he needs. More than Beans need and hunger for food is his desire for order, finding out how things work, and getting a grasp on the world around him. Bean has to get a picture of things in his mind. Bean is always defying the rules and challenging them in some way, which was a common occurrence for him. Even when things are off limits, Bean tries to find ways to gain information without getting caught (he thinks).

Bean continues in his outside the norm behavior by crawling into a vent to do further investigation of the fleet ship. In the vent, Bean finds himself with a view of a teacher who logs onto his computer and Bean sees his password. From there, Bean proceeds to use this teacher’s password to get any information he wants, whether it be about people or the fleet layout.

By Bean gaining this access into the computer this will allow him to gather the information he needs for his goal. Bean begins to read Ender Wiggins personnel file because the kids commented how much Bean reminds them of Ender. Bean sees Ender’s character and wants to know what he needs to learn in order for Ender to use him as his right hand man. In order for Bean to do this, he needs to find out about Ender’s friends,