Little Brother

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-19

Chapters 20-21, Epilogue, and Afterword

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 15-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 15 Summary

Marcus emails the press after first blogging his intention to have a press conference on Xnet, ensuring that he won’t be the only voice advocating against the DHS. During the press conference, he texts that he is not a leader of anything, but that the DHS, without his consent has turned San Francisco into a police state where every citizen is a terrorist suspect. He then turns all the questions over to his fellow Xnetters. He does, however, point out that the DHS is failing at protecting Americans against terrorism because they themselves provoke terror, and their screening tactics are so flawed that a high schooler could get past them.

The press focuses on his boast that he could easily circumvent DHS security measures, prompting one newscaster to label Xnetters as “Cal Qaeda” (241). The DHS doubles security in San Francisco after the press conference and begins to arrest Xnetters in record numbers to unravel the network. Marcus and Ange argue over the safety of jamming; Marcus wants Xnetters to stop jamming to avoid arrest, but Ange believes backing down is cowardly. Marcus leaves on bad terms.

While leaving school the next day, Marcus is knocked to the ground by Zeb, a teen without a home, who plants a message in Marcus’s backpack that reveals that Darryl is still alive on Treasure Island. Zeb, who shared a cell in the infirmary with Darryl, escaped last week. Reading the note causes Marcus to sob, and his mother comes into his room to comfort him. Marcus tries to tell her that the note is from his girlfriend but instead tells Lillian everything that happened to him on the day of the bombing.

Chapter 16 Summary

Lillian has Marcus repeat his story to Drew, who is enraged with his gullibility and the machinations of the DHS. The three of them drive to Darryl’s house to tell his father that his son is still alive, then meet with Barbara, an investigative reporter.

Barbara has agreed to meet with them that night, but cautions them that whatever their story is, she may not act on it or publish it. However, after Marcus tells his story, Barbara decides that the story has merit. She warns Marcus that he and Darryl will be in danger once the story gets out and asks if there is anything that will discredit them after she publishes. Marcus tells her in confidence about his M1k3y persona, and she asks him to meet with her the following day.

The next day, Ange reconciles with Marcus as he leaves school to meet with Barbara. He tells her he has come clean with an investigative reporter, and she accompanies him to the newspaper office. Barbara asks them to show her everything about Xnet, telling them that the story could topple the current government.

Chapter 17 Summary

After Ange and Marcus show Barbara around Xnet, she tells them that she will confirm the story and ask the DHS to comment. This and her caution that the story is now hers to do with as she wants reminds Marcus that once the story breaks, the DHS will come after him.

When Ange and Marcus go back to her house, they make love for the first time. Afterwards, Marcus logs into Xnet and finds an encrypted message from Masha, who tells him that she is an Xnet infiltrator for DHS. Caught on the same day as Marcus, the DHS recruited her to spy on other kids in exchange for her freedom. The DHS is days away from arresting M1k3y, and she wants to help him escape before that happens. In return, he must create a diversion using Xnet so she can escape as well.

When Marcus refuses Masha’s overtures, she sends him a hack that allows her to tunnel a video over DNS. The video shows Kurt Rooney, the President’s Chief of Staff, giving orders to DHS officials to close down Xnet. The White House has been amplifying the radical elements of Xnet to help with the midterm elections, but they are now planning to cut loose Xnet because the group is no longer radical enough. Additionally, Rooney tells the other officials that something big is going to happen before the midterms; nobody should make travel plans. Marcus realizes the government is using Xnet to further their own political agenda. He contacts Masha to tell her he will create the diversion if she takes Ange with them when they escape.

Chapter 18 Summary

On the BART ride home, Marcus thinks about a time when he and Darryl were live action role playing (LARP). LARPing involved dressing up as assigned characters and completing a quest, and his and Darry’s favorite game was Wretched Daylight. In this game, LARPers would congregate in hotels as vampire hunters and vampires. During one game, Marcus told a reporter that he was a member of a lost tribe who were searching for the descendent of their dead prince. National news picked up the story, but it was eventually fact-checked and proven false. In the aftermath, Charles told classmates that Marcus and Darryl dressed up as vampires on the weekends, and the teasing that ensued drove both boys to stop LARPing and begin to play alternate reality games like Harajuku Fun Madness.

As Marcus mulls on that humiliation, he thinks of a diversion that will allow their escape. The next day, he and Ange spread the word on Xnet that there will be a VampMob the next morning. Xnetters should dress up as vampires and show up to locations that M1k3y will reveal at seven o’clock in the morning. Marcus brings Ange to his house to meet his parents and after dinner, packs for his escape, rationalizing that they will be able to return in two weeks after Barbara’s story hits.

Chapter 19 Summary

The next morning, Marcus sends out an email detailing the rules of the VampMob: To survive, participants must feed on other vampires by making eye contact and shouting bite five times. At the end of the game, Marcus and Ange will pass a secret message by whisper campaign.

Marcus and Ange dress up as vampires and head for the Civic Center. Soon the plaza is filled with hundreds of costumed Xnetters and hundreds of “suits” catching the BART for work. As the game begins, the number of vampires swell to a thousand and stall traffic. Law enforcement begins to mobilize, and Marcus, who has split away from Ange, begins the endgame whisper campaign, spreading the word to the Xnetters to pretend they are being gassed when the police tell them to disperse.

The DHS orders the crowd to disperse, and hundreds of Xnetters fall to the ground, gasping and retching. The suits panic, and the VampMob quickly turns frenzied. Masha grabs Marcus from behind, holding him in an arm-lock, and warns him they must leave; the gas is coming in two minutes. Marcus recognizes Masha as the teen who took their picture and threatened to turn them into the truant police just before the bridge was bombed. He refuses to leave without Ange, but Masha forces him out of the crowds, crossing the police line by flashing her DHS badge.

Masha has a ride out of town arranged, but they are stopped by Charles on the way to the pick-up. He has video of Marcus leading the VampMob and threatens to turn him in. Masha ruthlessly handcuffs Charles, taking his phone. She drags Marcus to a mover’s truck where they hide in the back under a table. Before Masha falls asleep, she shows Marcus the picture she took of him, Darryl, Van, and Jolu the day of the attack. Marcus realizes that the picture is proof that Darryl was with them just before the attack and thinks of the people he is letting down—Darryl, Ange, his father, and Darryl’s father, Ron Glover. Deciding to fight rather than escape, he steals Masha’s phone, waking her in the process. They fight, but Marcus claws his way out of the truck, padlocking the truck door shut on Masha’s fingers.

Chapters 15-19 Analysis

In these chapters, Doctorow focuses on The Importance of Free Speech in Preserving Democracy. While Marcus creates a space in Xnet where he and other Xnetters can criticize the DHS anonymously, they cannot go public without being arrested or worse. Their freedom of speech is canceled because of the bombing, and even the press, a bastion of free speech in America, is no help. Marcus’s campaign suffers at the hands of the press because M1k3y will never be credible as long as he is anonymous. Every time Marcus and Ange attempt to bring DHS tactics to light, the government spins the narrative, relying on the public’s fear of terrorist plots.

Doctorow pulls together issues of free speech, fear, and Marcus’s evolution into a leader in these chapters, building to Marcus’s epiphany about his own accountability. When he discovers Darryl is still alive, Marcus has a flashback of the trauma of his own incarceration by the DHS. Doctorow has practically buried all mention of Darryl up to this point, much like Marcus has buried those memories due to his shame. While Marcus says Darryl is the reason for attacking the DHS, he has in truth forgotten his friend. When he reads Zeb’s note, however, he remembers everything, especially the reek of his own urine as it dried into his pants. This detail gives away the real reason he is attacking the DHS: his shame at his own powerlessness and fear while in their hands. At this low point, which comes just after the press again misconstrues his motivations after the interview, Marcus turns to his mother and tells her the truth, admitting the fear that kept him from telling her before.

When Marcus tells his story to Barbara, Doctorow demonstrates that true freedom comes at a price. Working from the safety of anonymity, Marcus has no voice in how the press spins the abuses of the DHS, no matter how many pictures and videos he publishes on Xnet. Instead of initiating a conversation about the DHS’s excesses, the press deflects to Marcus’s boast that he can circumvent DHS security. The interview causes further loss of freedom, resulting, as it does, in a flood of Xnet arrests. However, those arrests force Marcus to take responsibility for the risks Xnetters are taking, an important step towards his evolution into a leader. Although he won’t give up his anonymity initially, which Ange immediately picks up on as evidence of his fear, he does publicly tell Xnetters to step down from jamming.

Once Marcus lets go of the corrosive fear and tells his story to his mother, however, he begins to employ his freedom of speech more effectively. Rather than speaking to the press behind a screen of anonymity, he meets personally with Barbara, which gives his story credibility. He finally shows his father how the DHS works against American’s freedom, convincing Drew of their real agenda. This freedom to speak comes at a price, however, as Marcus has now publicly attacked the DHS without the cover of Xnet. When Marcus goes public, Doctorow establishes that he has assumed the responsibilities and obligations of an adult, a metamorphosis further symbolized when he loses his virginity immediately after.

Darryl’s father, Ron, also plays a part in Marcus’s credibility with Barbara. His uniform is a symbol of the military establishment and gives an aura of legitimacy to Marcus’s story. It is a sign of belonging to a group commonly recognized by the American public as good. In contrast, the DHS do not wear uniforms. Their vehicles have no military insignia, they wear sports coats during Marcus’s interrogation, and the soldiers have haircuts that are “not quite military” (43). What makes the assault on General Claude Geist so disturbing is that the Geist is wearing a uniform, but the DHS soldiers are not, creating a visual symbol of the DHS attacking democracy and demonstrating the division between covert government agencies and the legitimate military.

Doctorow aligns the DHS with the terrorists throughout this section. They both control through fear. They both operate in secret. Marcus does too, which delegitimizes his efforts to overthrow the DHS. When he comes forward publicly, he is working with the system instead of against it, using the Fourth Estate to bring forward the abuses, which turns the tide against the DHS. When he orchestrates the diversion in full view of thousands of BART suits, he also ensures that the DHS and press cannot spin the VampMob as an Al Qaeda attempt to radicalize youth. However, the DHS’s connection to the terrorists goes beyond just their covert actions. “Ruthless” Kurt Rooney’s warning to DHS officials to not make travel plans in the month preceding the midterms points to the government’s prior knowledge of an impending terrorist attack. His gloating hatred of San Francisco combined with the immediate presence of scores of DHS agents with a fully stocked prison on Treasure Island the day of the bombing displays foreknowledge of that attack as well. Doctorow is hinting at a connection between American political agendas and so-called terrorist attacks, building on the premise that fear is a political tool to motivate and control citizens.

Marcus’s character arc into a leader is completed in the moving truck with Masha. He balances his fear against his obligations to his father, Ange, Ron, and Darryl. His statement, “That was when I knew I couldn’t run. That was when I knew I had to stay and fight” (319) marks his epiphany that hiding will not solve any of his or San Francisco’s problems; he must step up as a leader. When he padlocks the truck, he is symbolically locking up his fears and returning to the fight.