Protest and Resistance Theme Analysis

“Don’t tell me your family believes that Government propaganda stuff,” she said. “They’ve spent so much money trying to convince people they can monitor all the TVs and computers, you know they couldn’t have afforded to actually do it. I’ve been using our computer since I was three—and watching TV, too—and they’ve never caught me.”

“No, of course I wouldn’t rather hide,” Jen said irritably. “But getting one of those I.D.’s—that’s just a different way of hiding. I want to be me and go about like anybody else. There’s no compromise. Which is why I’ve got to convince these idiots that the rally’s their only chance.”

“When I was little, Mom used to take me to a play group that was all third children,” Jen said. She giggled. “The thing was, it was all Government officials’ kids. I think some of the parents didn’t even like kids—they just thought it was a status symbol to break the Population Law and get away with it.”

“Jen, can’t you understand? I do want it to work. I hope—”

“Hope doesn’t mean anything,” Jen snapped. “Action’s the only thing that counts.”

“I still can’t go. I’m sorry. It’s something about having parents who are farmers, not lawyers. And not being a Baron. It’s people like you who change history. People like me—we just let things happen to us.”

“They shot her,” Jen’s father said. “They shot all of them. All forty kids at the rally, gunned down right in front of the president’s house. The blood flowed into his rosebushes. But they had the sidewalks scrubbed before the tourists came, so nobody would know.”

“Did she really think the rally would work?” he said.

“Yes,” Luke assured him. Then, unbidden, the last words she’d spoken to him came back to him: We can hope—after she’d told him hope was worthless. Maybe she knew the rally would fail. Maybe she even knew she would probably die. He remembered the first day he’d met her, when she’d cut her hand to cover the drops of blood on the carpet. There was something strange in Jen he couldn’t quite understand, that made her willing to sacrifice herself to help others. Or try to.

“I only work at Population Police headquarters. I don’t agree with what they do. I try to sabotage them as much as I can. Jen never understood, either—sometimes you have to work from inside enemy lines.”

Maybe he could succeed where Jen had failed precisely because he wasn’t a Baron—because he didn’t have her sense that the world owed him everything. He could be more patient, more cautious, more practical.

But he’d never be able to do anything staying in hiding.

[…]

I want a fake I.D. Please.