Eight years after the invasion, Ender explores new territory, which resembles the giant of the mind game. He concludes that the buggers built it for him. He enters the game and confronts the queen.
Valentine provides Ender with the final word on manipulation. People are always manipulated, all that they can choose is whose path they will follow. Ender will never be able to live his own life; in fact, there is no such thing as living one's own life without others' influence. Ender leaves with Valentine because at least once he gets to the bugger world he will be on his own. Peter will not be able to control him there, and he can attempt to understand better the race that he destroyed. When he finds the bugger queen Ender understands that the buggers know him very well, and that they understood that he did not hate. They knew that his compassion would be strong enough for him to help them. Even the buggers manipulate Ender, since they get him to dedicate his life to finding them a new home. The difference is that Ender has taken Valentine's advice and has chosen to follow the path that he wants to be on anyway. In this way Ender is able to finally win back his freedom, because, although he is on a mission that another race left for him, it is the mission that he wants to be on. The buggers understood Ender better than anyone else, because they saw his thoughts, and so they know not only that will he help them but that he wants to help them.
In the end it is Ender's empathy that wins out. He is perhaps the only human being who would be willing to listen to what the bugger queen has to say, and empathy is the same trait that allows him to destroy the buggers. Ender was right when he told his sister that after he understands his enemy, and before he destroys them, he loves them. Now there is no war to be fought, and he does not have to destroy someone else's enemy. Ender is free to understand and to love, and that is why he agrees to help the buggers find a new home. He has to make up for the crimes that he committed. Graff and Rackham thought that they were doing what needed to be done, and that the necessities of war meant they had no choice but to trick Ender into fighting, but Ender now knows that they were wrong. All of mankind was wrong. The buggers did not want to fight and would have been willing to communicate. They do not blame humans for killing them, but Ender blames himself because he always knew in his heart that there had to be a way other than war with other sentient beings. All of the manipulation that Ender had to endure was to win a war that never needed to have been fought, and this deeply troubled Ender's soul. Now, with the bugger queen, he has a chance to undo his wrongs and bring back the consciousness that he wiped out, and there is no one else to tell him what to do. Ender is finally free, and with his freedom he must make up for all that he did while under someone else's control. Valentine was right when she told him that his life would never be his own, but it is only when acting fully of our own volition, even if on a path prescribed by another, that we are truly free. It took years and billions of deaths, but Ender Wiggin has won his freedom, and he has still retained the compassion that will let him use that freedom to help make up for the crimes of his past.
can i get a shorter version of this that pecificly answers the question
He feels compassionate and guilty over what he's destroyed, and he's going to spend the rest of his life trying to gain atonement (make up for what he has done). He now has the freedom to do that.
