For my final remix project, I have decided to focus on a theme in Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother that I believe is a fundamental aspect of his story, the relationship between his characters, and one of the most clearest and present themes throughout his novel. This theme is the concept of how individuals behave and relate to one another during times of chaos. In Little Brother, the bombing of the bridge and the killing of many of the city’s citizens caused the people in the city to act very differently than they would in normal circumstances. I believe that this change in attitude and behavior is a very interesting one to focus in on and I would like to analyze them carefully for my project. There are a few main ideas that I believe are important to consider.
First, during times of chaos, I believe it is important to show and describe how society as a whole (especially in Little Brother) becomes incredibly fearful of the youth. In Little Brother, the youth were outcast by much of their community and were seen as a population that couldn’t be trusted at all. In fact, they were viewed as incredibly dangerous. Continuing on, I would like to also consider how during times of chaos, people fight to protect themselves on an individual basis and try to fight those they love as well. However, it is equally important to me that I show that many individuals become distrustful of their loved ones and those who are close to them. In Little Brother, it seemed as though many people didn’t know who to trust, who to hate, and so on. This leads to a further complication of chaotic times, which is how the child and parent may miscommunicate and have serious problems at home. In the novel, Marcus and his dad couldn’t agree on government control and their different opinions caused their relationship to suffer. I would also like to focus on how chaotic times lead certain groups to rise up and fight for their rights. Specifically, I think it’s crucial to show how the youth fights for their right against government action and control during difficult circumstances. Finally, I plan on tuning into how, during times of incredible trouble for a communit,y (or country), there is a major discrepancy between fighting for one’s individual rights and gaining individual power and obeying authority when a community is in mass chaos and the government and other sources of power are trying to strip people of their individuality and rights.
I plan on creating a long poem for part of my remix project. I don’t think that it will rhyme but I am confident in my ability to convey a dramatic message through poetry, as long as I have enough time to do so. I think I will put my poem as one of the first or second pages of the websites and have links from the poem (on certain dramatic and important words) that lead out to other pages that I want to focus on and describe in more detail. However, I plan on making most of the writing be in the poem itself. I also think it would be interesting to have a few pages dedicated to pictures and youtube videos that relate to the various subjects that I describe in my poem. Hopefully, I can execute this project successfully while also making my site as user friendly as it can be. I think that my idea so far is a good starting out point and I am excited to see where this project takes me.
