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=​​1984-Little Brother Wiki=

It is hard to accept a change. It is difficult to accept the defeat of athority and it is challenging to establish a new athority. This is presented in //1984// by George Orwell, a story where a man named Winston realizes that in a world where he is always watched by an athority known as the party, he must defeat and overthrow the government and defy Big Brother, a figurehead of the party. It is also presented in the text //Litthe Brother// by [|Cory Doctorow], a story of a young hacker who is abducted by the Department of Homeland Security after a terroroist attack, and he plans to expose the DHS and tell everyone that maybe security isn't as good as rights. After detailed review of the two texts, it can be concluded that even though the plots of the stories are different, the meanings given can be compared with relative ease. After reviewing the theme of the two both books, which is challenging the system, one can feel that either challenging the athority is something that should be done, or that it is dangerous and should not be attempted. But what one can learn may vary from person to person, and whatever one learns, the aftereffect of what it was effects him or her for the rest of his or her life. But Marcus was successful in challenging the system, and Winston failed because of various personalities and government styles in each of the books.

//1984 // and //Little Brother// show that even the weakest link in society can become the leader and establish his own society out of the ruins of others. Winston in //1984// shows that even though a government can make people mindless drones that follow the athority for the sake of following, they cannot make everyone like this. This causes some people who think differently to [|spark a revolution]. Winston and his girlfriends Julia come together and defy society, but before they can start a revolution or a protest, they are captured by the athorities and are taken into the Ministry of Love. In the prison of the Ministry of Love, Winston thinks, ''They would have blown his brain to pieces before they could reclaim it. The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach forever. They would have blown a hole in their own perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom'' (Orwell 281). This shows that Winston is willing to defy Big Brother to the bitter end of his life, and that alone he believed would bring it crumbling down. //Little Brother// has Marcus, a young teenager who is naturally defiant and likes to challenge systems. When a terrorist attack causes the [|Department of Homeland Security] to start controlling the daily lives of individuals and actually abducts "suspected terrorists" Marcus begins to defy the system in order to recue Darryl, his best friend. ''At last count, four thousand two hundred fifteen of my neighbors were killed on the day he's talking about. But some of them may not have been killed. Some of them dissapeared into the same prison where I was tortured. Some mothers and fathers, children and lovers, brothers and sisters will never see their loved ones again- because they were secretly imprisoned in an illegal jail right here in the San Fransisco Bay''(Doctorow 362). This sums up the whole story and how Marcus uses this kind of evidence to throw back at the DHS and he eventually succeeds. Winston was too slow to act in challenging the system, but Marcus was very persistant.

Despite what can be taken from the book, many questions are thrown up into the air behind the stage. Some questions are somewhat useless, while others have a deeper meaning and cannot be answered with a simple statement. What exactly happened to Darryl? How come he had to stay while the other members of the group got to leave? Was it because he had to go to a hospital? Maybe the DHS thought he was really involved because someone stabbed him with a knife (Doctorow 38). This was never clearly explained. Second, It's not certain how Carrie Johnston, the women who interrogated Marcus in the prison on [|Treasure Island], could have gotten off 'totally scot free' (Doctorow 360) when she completely tortured Marcus and others, and it was all captured on video surveilance. It just doesn't make sense. In Orwell's book, Winston gets drunk and see's Big Brother as a great figure at the end (Orwell 297). But doesn't that only happen when he is drunk? So if he wasn't drunk, what would happen? How would the government keep him drunk? There's a way he might be able to fake being drunk, by acting drunk and avoiding drunk tests. He could be acting like he is loaded up on victory gin. There has to be a way that Winston could hit back at Big Brother. If all stories ended like that, then the US will have never been founded, World War II was never won.

Where does everything go from here? What does it all mean? How has this affected people's lives? The answer is the fact that now that one has the knowlege of challenging the system, he can apply it to make sure that no one has control of him. There is no way to change who one really is. Winston proved it by defying the Party and Marcus defied it by rebelling outright. Someone could use this knowlege to be more independant. These kinds of people need to stand up for themselves. When someone become themselves, they become someone who can take a system and make it better, whether it be improving it or throwing it out the window.

Two stories with almost nothing in common are exactly the same in what they are telling others. //1984// is telling people to have a sense of independance in their own lives. //Little Brother// is telling others that security is not worth giving freedom for, and that getting one step ahead of security is easy (Doctorow 369) Marcus and Winston teach people a lesson, but it’s up to others to learn that lesson.

Works Cited

Doctorow, Cory. //About Cory Doctorow//. 19 Feb 2010. []

Doctorow, Cory. //Little Brother.// New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2008.

Google Maps. //Treasure Island//. 19 Feb 2010. []

Orwell, George. //1984.// New York: New Amreican Library. 1950.

The White House. //Homeland Security//. 20 Feb 2010. []

WikiAnswers. //What Causes Revolutions//. 20 Feb 2010. []

Wikipedia. //George Orwell Biography//. 19 Feb 2010. []