Little Brother (Part 8)

Notice: I have finished the book Little Brother. Posts on Ender’s Game will begin tomorrow.

    

     Marcus decided to escape from Masha when she brought him to the truck that would take him to a new place where he could live underground, in secret. He was smart to escape, in my opinion. Masha still could have been working for the Homeland Security for all Marcus knew. And he had to go back for Ange, who was being held captive for being associated with the Xnet and Marcus/M1k3y (as he was known on the Xnet). However, when Marcus went to sleep for the night under the freeway, he was caught by Homeland Security and brought to the prison again.

     Here I think he was rather tactless. Shouldn’t he have made sure he had disguised his face with mud or cloth or something? So he wouldn’t be recognizable from the pictures that were in a newspaper article about him. But he had slept in the open, and was therefore paying for his mistake.

     When he got to the prison, he was thrown into a cell for the night, and then brought into a room for interrogation. They performed a kind of torture known as simulated execution. As in, he would feel like he was dying or dead until they finished interrogating him. His form of simulated execution was to hang him upside-down and pour water down his nose and mouth so he felt as though he were drowning. They asked him for his username and password to his Xnet account, and he wouldn’t give it.

     Marcus was gallant not to give in, but it just caused him more pain. They had poured buckets of water down his mouth and nose, and he still wouldn’t give in. Here, I don’t think he was thinking about Ange or Darryl. If he had been thinking about them he would have done this differently. But he was able to hold in the information long enough for the reporter who reported his story to the newspaper to show up with the National Guard. They released him and all the other prisoners (but they were all still arrested until they paid bail). Marcus went to search for Ange and Darryl, and they all had a relatively happy ending.

     This is classic. It reminds me of Harry Potter, actually (I relate things to Harry Potter often). How Marcus had to topple a government, and how Harry had to defeat Voldemort, who had taken over the government. The interrogations about terrorists that Marcus’s government performed remind me of the interrogations that took place in the seventh Harry Potter book, when the government was trying to find out who was a real wizard and who was a ‘muggle-born’ wizard. The interrogations that happened in Harry Potter also included torture.

     The ending to Little Brother was classic. Marcus kissed Ange and they went out for burritos (well, the burritos weren’t classic, but it was close enough). The book contained the vague storyline of a young boy who leads a rebellion against a government or a person, succeeds, but has to go through many physical and mental challenges. The author did, thankfully, put a new, futuristic spin on the storyline.

     Overall, I did enjoy the book. It was a good read that didn’t take long to complete (I drew out the blog posts so they would last a week, even though I finished the book a few days ago). The author ended the book with a finality that shows it will not have a sequel. 

     And that is the last of Little Brother! I hope you'll miss it, because I will.