Josh Ronen's Topic Proposal

For my research hypertext, I would like further analyze Cory Doctorow's view on one of the several themes of the novel, Marcus's so-called "Bloodless Revolution" against the Department of Homeland Security. The question is, is bloodshed the only method in which people can organize and take down an obvious enemy? I mean this in the broadest of terms. Doctorow's answer appears all throughout the novel. It is an emphatic "no." All throughout "Little Brother", Doctorow shows Marcus using his street smarts and his vast knowledge of technology and the Internet (with the help of his close friends and Xnetters along the way) to take down the beast known as the DHS. He is a "silent assassin," so-to-speak. He never wanted himself to be portrayed as a leader of any kind, especially when it came to talking to the media, and only worked closely with those he could trust. Doctorow makes this topic one of the key unresolved questions of the novel.

In the history of the world, we often see the use of bloodshed as a means to acquire victory over an unpopular regime of some kind or to instill fear over a particular group. One example is the Civil Rights Era in the USA in the 1860s. African Americans organized and responded to the hate, racism, and discrimination they faced. Martin Luther King could most definitely attest to that. The path to equality, though, was not golden. Many African Americans were killed in the process by hate groups like the KKK. Even more recently, history has shown that people do not learn from their mistakes of the past. An example of this is the War in Darfur, better known as the Genocide in Sudan that has been ongoing since 2003. However, history also goes to show that we don't need to shed blood to solve our biggest conflicts. A man who embodied the whole idea of non-violence and peaceful resistance and therefore Doctorow's theme of a "Bloodless Revolution,"was none other than Mahatma Gandhi.