The stories behind ‘Don’t Let Life Bring You Down’ #1 — Fight Club, V for Vendetta, A Clockwork Orange

Doug, the main character in ‘Don’t Let Life Bring You Down’, is a normal person who wants to be a hero, or even a real life superhero. A superhero like Superman fights for his ideals by doing things ordinary members of society can’t. Doug on the other hand, does things other members of society won’t.

For a normal person to attempt superhero feats requires bravery and a passionate need or will to succeed and survive, but because Doug’s normal he displays a normal person’s negative sides, such as vulnerability, fear and misplaced confidence.

In later chapters he displays typical features of someone (supposedly) in power; becoming what you were fighting against, contradictory actions, conflicting ideals — everyone thinks they’re changing the world for the better, but not everyone can be correct.

For those chapters I drew influence from ‘A Clockwork Orange’, though instead of focusing on describing the violence, I emphasised more on describing why there was violence.

The final theme is that of how real is man’s perception of what’s around him and how much control does he have of his destiny? As in ‘V for Vendetta’ Doug executes well planned acts and feats and as in ‘Fight Club’ he performs and achieves such feats he’d previously thought impossible. But unlike V, who’s in control of his fate from the story’s beginning to its end, and the Narrator character in Fight Club who discovers the truth and acts accordingly, Doug only manages to find out once it’s too late.