Peeing

Hey, let's play a little game of free association. When we say "freedom," say the first words/images/symbols that come into you head.

If you're anything like us, you thought of a bird soaring. The sight of an open road. Mel Gibson in Braveheart, roaring.

But we're guessing you didn't think of freedom as being synonymous with peeing your pants. (Unless you're two years old and rebelling against potty training—in which case, congrats: your reading skills are beyond genius levels.)

In Little Brother, however, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…and that includes a clean pair of trousers. But bodily functions are actually a pretty evolving symbol in Little Brother, and it takes a while for it to get to full-blown "symbol of freedom" status. Let's check out its journey.

Marcus uses a pretty scatological metaphor as a way of explaining why privacy is important:

Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There's nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them. But what if I decreed that from now on, every time you went to evacuate some solid waste, you'd have to do it in a glass room perched in the middle of Times Square, and you'd be buck naked? (4.34)

Nope. Nope, nope. Doesn't sound too fun to us. Sign us up for the whole "privacy" thing.

But Marcus keeps on keepin' on with the bathroom metaphors. The first time we hear him talk about going wee-wee (wee all the way home), Marcus is captured and has to argue with guards on the truck about getting to relieve himself. See, the guard doesn't want to cut off his plastic cuffs, but he does when Marcus says:

"Look. You either cut my wrists free or you're going to have to aim for me. A toilet visit is not a hands-free experience." (3.82)

Another convincing argument, courtesy of Marcus Yallow. We can see a direct symbolic correlation before his glass-toilet-in-Times-Square metaphor and this one—if a lack of privacy is as messy (and icky) as a transparent commode, then the people who invade privacy have to be ready and willing to get their hands dirty. Sometimes literally.

Later, when Marcus's in the secret prison, he's left locked up with his hands cuffed together. And when his hands are tied, he finds it impossible to unzip. He says, succinctly:

I pissed myself. (4.57).

There was no other option. It turns out that he's being punished for talking to Van in the yard—this humiliation is part of a pretty harsh scolding. And, when the guards take him in front of severe haircut lady a little later he feels ashamed.

But he gets over that—maybe because he remembers his earlier statement that:

Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There's nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them.

These is nothing shameful about your body getting rid of waste—but there is something shameful about preventing humans the proper means to go to the bathroom in a civilized manner. He takes this lesson to heart, and by the time he's DHS custody, peeing himself becomes a liberating experience (20.180-184). He even tells severe haircut lady that she should try it sometime (20.190).

Wetting himself isn't liberating because it's fun. Far from it. But when Marcus realizes that he's been tortured, and that he's being prevented from peeing in a toilet in an attempt to break his spirit, he lets go of his shame.

And there's nothing more liberating than letting go of shame…especially when you're confronting with people that want to use your shame as a means of getting you down.