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 * A Greater meaning**

"See every difficulty as a challenge, a stepping stone, and never be defeated by anything or anyone.” This quote by Eileen Caddy explains a lot of the topics brought up in the books //1984 // by George Orwell, and //Little Brother // by Cory Doctorow. In the book //1984 // the society in which the main character Winston lives in is all about government control. The government tells the people what to do when to do it and every aspect of their everyday lives. Winston is a man who has decided, with a little help from his lover Julia, that his society is not right. He tries to take down Big Brother. Big Brother is the ruler of the society. The reader does not know if he is real or if he is just a symbol the government uses. He ends up going to prison. In the prison he is tortured and ends up loving Big Brother. He tries to change his society just like Marcus, the main character in Little Brother//. Marcus lives in a society that parallels America. People have the [|freedoms America] has and all the opportunities too. Marcus is tech savvy kid who just like Winston, gets help from friends. But the difference is that Marcus has more than one friend. He ends up going to jail for a little while but gets out and changes his world by making people more aware of the issues going on. Both George Orwell’s // //1984// //and Cory Doctorow’s // //Little Brother// //show that individuals need to develop their own ideas, that when people rebel against the government, they may be considered a terrorist, and that consequently, society needs to question the government. //

//In both // //1984// //and // //Little Brother// //the people of the societies follow the ‘norm’ and don’t develop ideas for themselves. In the book // //1984// //Winston’s wife, Katharine, is a great example of this. Katharine goes with everything that the government says and does. She doesn’t try to do anything for herself. There is one point in the book when she tells Winston that he needs to be quiet or the thought police will hear him. Katharine doesn’t support Winston going against the government at all. She is all about obeying and not going against the government. Katharine does not think for herself but in turn lets the government control aspects if her life. This is very similar to the characters in // Little Brother//. Most of the characters in // //Little Brother// //are able to think for themselves without having the worry of getting punished for it. There are a few characters though that won’t think for themselves and let the government dictate what they do. One of these characters is Marcus’s father. Marcus’s father is a follower of the government and does not do anything against them. An example in the book is when he is sitting at the breakfast table and he is talking about how he supports the idea of the police officers searching people at random for things that could cause chaos or terror among the people. “They may not have caught any terrorists yet, but they’re sure getting a lot of scumbags off the streets” (Doctorow, 123). Marcus’s father is supporting the idea of police officers randomly searching people. And even though they are getting bad people off the streets it is an invasion of privacy. He, just like Katharine lets the government dictate the way he thinks and dictate what he does. Many people in these two societies are just like this and cannot think for themselves because they will get in trouble for it or they just can’t. // // When people rebel against the government they could be considered a dangerous threat or a [|terrorist]. Rebelling against the government does not seem like an easy feat. Marcus and Winston are able to attempt this even though they don’t exactly ‘win’. If people tried to go against the government today, would they be able to actually accomplish it? Winston is not victorious at the end of the book. Marcus is victorious but his victory is different because it opens up the eyes of the people, but the only thing that changes is the DHS getting taken out of San Francisco. At the end of // //1984////Winston is put into room 101, the room of torture. In this room the biggest fear Winston has is unleashed. In the end he does not have the idea of rebelling against the government. “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother” (Orwell, 297). Winston had been forced by the Thought Police to love Big Brother. Winston did not make his rebellion public and so his society did not know, that is the opposite of Marcus. He rebelled and was put into a jail for it. He was tortured for days because the DHS wanted to know things. But the difference between Marcus and Winston is Marcus was considered a hero at the end. Are Winston and Marcus considered terrorists if they are trying to get the rights they deserve back? The terrorists that bombed the twin towers tried to go against the government. [|Mr. Brad Meyer], a teacher at Arapahoe High School, came into the English 9 honors class to talk about security measures taken and technological advancements since the bombing. Mr. Meyer explained that airport security has increased drastically since [|9/11]. New technology like the Airport Body Imaging machine has come around. Is this an invasion of privacy? Are people okay with this? All in all if anyone rebelled against the government today, accomplishing it would be very hard. //

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">Society today needs to learn to question moves that the government makes. The moves that should be questioned the most are the ones that people are unsure of progressing through. One of the moves that is questioned every day is if getting involved in the war over in Iraq was worth it. People can argue both sides as yes America needed to do this in order to keep our resources and trade alive over there or, people can say it was not worth losing so American lives. Either way it will always be one of the unsolved and non-agreeable situations. Questioning the government in general should be done everywhere because it will make the government more conscious of the decisions they make and how it will affect the people. Winston and Marcus do this, but Marcus is much more prominent about it. Marcus’s father was just finished being pulled over by people of the DHS…twice, “God, what are we doing to this country, Marcus? Your generation deserves to inherit something better than this” (Doctorow, 134). If people of the society that Marcus lives in were able to rebel maybe the government would have caught on to the [|DHS] sooner. In America’s society people do question the government but not enough. America has the freedoms to question what the government does, and they need to use it. If questioning the government went more public more people would be made aware of issues that are going on in today’s time. //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"> The books //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> //Little Brother// //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-style: normal;">and // //1984// //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-style: normal;">show that people need to develop their own ideas, question the government and if they choose to rebel, they could be considered a terrorist for it. Developing ideas that aren’t what the government dictates to people is key when choosing to question or rebel against the government. But when rebelling against the government, as long as it isn’t in a way that can be considered terroristic then society could find out and try to help. This happens more so in ////<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Little Brother ////<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-style: normal;"> than in ////<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">1984. ////<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-style: normal;">If bombing places is the idea most of society will not accept it. Questioning the government will not only make the government conscientious of what they do but most of the society surrounding. Ralph Waldo Emerson has a very interesting quote that can be used to challenge the government and make people have their own ideas. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” //


 * //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-style: normal;">Work Cited //**

Arapahoe High School. Mr. Brad Meyer. 21 Feb. 2010. []//<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">Dictionary.com. Terrorist. 21 Feb. 2010. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terrorist> // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-style: normal;">New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2008. //

Dictionary.com. Terrorist. 21 Feb. 2010. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terrorist> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Early America. The Constitution of the United States. 21 Feb. 2010. <http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/constitution/> //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-style: normal;"> Meyer, Brad. Class Lecture, 14 Jan. 2010 //

//<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-style: normal;">Orwell, George. // 1984. New York: New American Library, 1950. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> September11news.com. Timelines, Images, and Graphics from the September 11, 2001 Attacks on the World Trade Center in NYC and the Pentagon in Washington. 21 Feb. 2010.< http://www.september11news.com/AttackImages.htm>

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Home page. 21 Feb 2010. < http://www.dhs.gov/index.shtm>