How Our Class Discussion Relates To The Novel

Cole Thomas

Great Books Period 2

Wednesday February 3, 2010

I also enjoyed this morning’s discussion. I believe that everything that we talked about directly related to the novel Little Brother. The class discussion and the Book Little brother are related because of the concept of freedom and surveillance. Surveillance is a key concept because everything everyone does is being monitored and the bulk of our discussion this morning was on how the Chinese’s monitor the information that their citizens have access to. We also talked a little about the Patriot act and the American Government monitoring its citizens. We said that like in the novel our government has the power of monitoring everything we do. This was a scary thought for me not because I am a terrorist but because then they would be able to see my personalized documents and files. I thought it was very funny how u took over our computers and made your point to us all and showed us how it would feel to lose control of something that is one of your more personal items.

Towards the end we talked about the new law that the government is trying to create called ACTA, Anti-copyright Trade Agreement. In this agreement between the United States of America, European Commission, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. It is my opinion that the United States should not go though with ACTA. I dislike the fact that the Obama administration is creating this agreement in private so that people won’t have the knowledge about it so that they may not protest it.

In the previous semester we talked about how literature is something that people read and write so that the can connect with others in the world. I believe that this book provokes emotions with people about the government, which is in place in their country. They wonder if it is possible if America will ever digress so far as to act like they do in the book. This book is also targeted towards teenagers because every teenager wants to believe that they can make a difference in the world.

At the end of chapter 14 Marcus recites the declaration of independence. I knew that we read the declaration of independence so that we could understand freedom better in the book but when he recited it I realized that another reason was that you wanted that part of the book to mean more to us than just a line from a famous document.

I am really amazed at how you can start talking about all of these separate topics and in the end make them related. It really helps me understand better because we talk about everything separate and then in the end I can connect how they are related.