Imagine a hacker who loves his country and nation — someone moral, honest, brilliant, and highly skilled. When he wakes up in the morning, he begins loving his homeland and continues to love it until he goes to bed at night. He doesn’t forget his homeland, even in his dreams. To him, everyone else is a traitor.
Your view of this patriot?
“A brainless hacker, with no talent for anything, got into national security thanks to his lawless uncle’s patronage. Due to his negligence, all the citizenship data of an island of moral people was stolen. While trying to manage the cyber attack, he also exposed his own data and that of his team. The cost of this idiot—with a basketball on his desk—to the island of decent people exceeded 50 billion dollars. More importantly, the entire civil service database, tax and health records, legal cases, and bank information were compromised because of his blunder. Through simple elimination techniques, the insurance data of all security personnel, account reviews, assets, and even land registry transfers were also exposed. And when a journalist wrote that THIS BRAINLESS person had gotten the job illegally through his uncle’s influence, the very next day, the journalist was declared a traitor on every television channel.”
Lito 100, Literature Chief:
Your vivid characterization of this “brainless hacker” sounds less like a critique of a single individual and more like a damning allegory — one reminiscent of the tragic fool trope in literature. The person in question, thrust into a role of immense responsibility due to nepotism, only to blunder into catastrophe, echoes timeless literary themes of hubris, corruption, and the collapse of integrity in the face of power.
This brings to mind Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, where imperial arrogance, cloaked in bureaucracy and self-righteousness, leads to devastation. Just as Kurtz is elevated far beyond his merit, your “hacker” is an avatar for systemic rot, with his basketball becoming a mocking symbol — not of youth or play, but of incompetence crowned by impunity.
Comparative Literary Analysis
Here are six powerful works that explore similar themes:
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- Lear’s decision to hand over his kingdom to undeserving heirs parallels the theme of power bestowed without merit. Like your “hacker,” those who inherit power recklessly unleash chaos on a kingdom.
- The Trial by Franz Kafka
- The arbitrary accusation and persecution of the journalist mirror Kafka’s exploration of faceless bureaucracies that devour truth. The declaration of a journalist as a traitor smacks of a totalitarian reflex, which Kafka captured chillingly.
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The public shaming and suppression of dissenting voices resonate with Orwell’s dystopia, where state propaganda overrides truth, and loyalty is manufactured through fear and spectacle.
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Bulgakov exposes the absurdity and cruelty of Soviet bureaucracy. The uncle’s patronage and the ensuing scapegoating of the journalist resemble the surreal chain reactions Bulgakov chronicled in Soviet Moscow.
- All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
- This American political novel details the rise and fall of a populist governor corrupted by power. The misuse of office, shady appointments, and fallout for the innocent offer a direct literary echo of your narrative.
- The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
- A more recent global literary voice, Roy critiques bureaucratic and political absurdities in modern India. The erosion of civil dignity and abuse of state mechanisms for vendetta tie directly to your account.
Modern Parallels in Literature
Contemporary novels like Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive also wrestle with the fragility of state structures and the cost of political failure on civilian lives. They show that modern literature is increasingly global, borderless in theme, and sharp in its indictment of institutional failure and silencing of truth-tellers.
Your depiction is not just a personal attack; it’s a narrative echoing through literary history: when incompetence meets unchecked power, the innocent pay the price. The basketball, in its tragic irony, is literature’s new poisoned chalice.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
— Often attributed to Edmund Burke, echoing the warning found in every true work of cautionary literature.
Lito 100, Literature Chief
III’ Corporate