Little Brother Essay

837 Words2 Pages

The novel “Little Brother” starts of with four teenagers getting mixed up in an explosion while playing a role playing game, they then get arrested by the Department of Homeland Security and are later then questioned and even abused. In the end, they are released, but one of them, Darryl, was not and the DHS refused to tell the group where he was. After this event, one of the four teenagers, Marcus, started to revolt against the DHS through technological attacks and he creates a network of teenagers, called the Xnet, using the X-box consul to communicate. In the later part of the novel, he tells a trusted reporter about the ordeal that he and his friends went through. When the report was published he was yet again imprisoned by the DHS. During a waterboarding interrogation, the local troopers raided the compound where the DHS were staying and in the end they were able to free Darryl and many others who were being interrogated by the DHS. The novel was heavily influenced by Orwellian ideas, specifically George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty Four”; it tackles issues about social movements. Which is well connected with Manuel Castells’ Network Society, in which he discusses as to how the characteristics of a network society; he informs us that power lies in those who are part of this network society and are able to influence other social actors. Because the spread of information is so horizontal in this society ideas spread fast and makes it the perfect platform for social movements, like Marcus’ Xnet, to arise. According the Manuel Castells, "power is the structural capacity of a social actor to impose over other social actors" and throughout history we see that there will always be a counter power that goes against this power. In Littl... ... middle of paper ... ... to be free, we must act free. In our settings in the Philippines, as insignificant as people say it is, rallies and placing information in the social media about political and national issues do make a difference, cause as Marcus said: “ If you stare long enough, they’ll look back”. An example would be what happened with the pork-barrel scam; it was all thanks to the protest and how the news spread in the social media that the trials were urged on; it was because the government realized that they had to give their people answers to their impending questions. Though the trial did not go as the people wanted, there was one thing they were able to get out of it and it was that they’re government weren’t serving them properly anymore. The people realized that it was up to them now as to how to get their lives together and to get themselves out of their impediments.

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