HW # 13 - Feed B

M.T. Anderson wrote Feed in the form of an allegory. The literal story is set in the future as he describes what life is like for a group of teens living with the feed, a combination of the Internet, television, cell phone and web games, implanted in their brains. The symbolic story is of today's generation of teens, who are becoming more and more reliant on digital devices. Teens who spend too much of the day on the Internet, on Facebook, texting, listening to their Ipod are in danger of letting electronic devices rule their lives. The literal story of Feed are these kind of teens' lives taken to the extreme when corporations market products continuously through their feeds, and thinking is not necessary because all information is just looked up on on their Google brains. Violet, Titus's girlfriend, who in the literal story received a cheaper model feed when she was seven instead of at birth because her parents were poor, was able to develop her brain and actually think about the danger of a world run by corporations that are only interested in selling and take no responsibility for the environment or problems in the world. In the literal story the ocean is so polluted that whales have to be in some kind of wrapper just to survive so that they can be hunted. In the symbolic story the author is showing what can happen when corporations have too much power and ruin the environment or control media like Fox Five News.

Feed is also a tragedy about a rich boy in love with a poor girl who dies at the end. Violet's criticism of the corporate power that is ruining people's minds and making them unaware of everything that is happening in the world except the latest upcars ends up killing her because the corporations won't give her a new feed transplant that would save her life because she isn't a good investment. The author probably wrote the story as a tragedy to showw the danger of where teen's lives today could lead if there is too much dependence on the Internet for information and too much time on video games, cell phones, and creating an image on Facebook.

Maybe the fact that there is no solution given at the end by the author except an ironic one is because the idea is that people should think for themselves and not just be fed information.
The ending is ironic because when Violet finally dies from her low quality feed, Titus is crying.
Immediately, his feed comes on saying, "Feeling blue? Then dress blue." The feed senses his mood and immediately starts to sell him blue jeans at a great price. That is a tragic and comic ending that forces the reader to think about what can happen with technology gone crazy and people gone crazy on technology.

I think the artistic design of this book as an allegory and a tragedy with a lot of comedyis highly successful because the author has something important to say to young adults (although adults could get alot out of it too) and he really gets his message across.