Little Brother

In Little Brother, Doctorow enters a conversation with Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel written by George Orwell that was published in 1949. How are the DHS like the Party from Orwell’s novel? How prophetic is Nineteen Eighty-Four?

How does Marcus’s concern with books—his moral dilemma of reprogramming RFIDs in library books and his wrapping the physics book in paper towels before nuking it— reinforce or dismantle stereotypes about gamers?

Doctorow frequently gives out technological information that could be viewed as subversive, such as when he urges readers to Google how to spoof caller id. What do these call-to-actions reveal about Doctorow as an Internet activist?

How does the author use Marcus’s mother and father to represent different points of view about government oversight of individuals? What is the reason for each parent’s viewpoint? 

Explain the irony of Ms. Galvez’s termination after teaching about the Free Speech Movements. 

In Chapter 3, Marcus sees a “middle-aged lady in a hippie dress” (36) get trampled by the crowd in the BART station on the day of the bombing. What is the lady a metaphor for? What does the crowd represent? Metaphorically, what does it mean when Marcus attempts to save her but steps on her instead?

When another teen calls in to the California Live radio show, Marcus is frustrated by his tone. He writes, “He sounded like an idiot. Not just the incoherent words, but also his gloating tone. He sounded like a kid who was indecently proud of himself. He was a kid who was indecently proud of himself” (139). How is Marcus’s description of the teen an example of irony?

Doctorow repeatedly juxtaposes beauty with ugliness, especially in descriptions of the city. How do these juxtapositions provide a motif that examines image and truth? How do they also illuminate the nature of our freedoms?