HW 12- Feed A

Titus and his friends "went to the moon to have fun" because the earth sucked, but it sucked because "the moon turned out to completely suck", so then everyone felt "null" because everything sucked. They just wanted to be entertained for a while. But it sucked that they weren't.

The book "Feed" by M.T. Anderson is a rather confusing book. It is confusing because the life of a teenager is confusing, and the book simply reflects that confusion through the voice of the narrator. The way the narrator expresses himself suggest that he is a teenager who is subtly described to be trapped inside a world of idiocy. This novel is described to be taking place in what we understand as the future. However, the author's purpose was to simply represent the current teenage world as an allegory. Personally I do not think Anderson is on target when he attempts to represent the teenage life. This is because most teenagers do reflect on their own lives and tend to think too much about their surroundings and relationships. Even those who easily conform tend to feel uncertainty about their own world and therefore reflect on it. Anderson describes the main character, Titus, based on a stereotype of the typical American teenager. In other words, he attempts to communicate a whole world though a flat character, which somehow works with the story for being based on stereotypes on what the character is expected to become in his own society. The characters are described to be surrounded by different types of electronic devices which is similar to our current generation. Because of this, the characters in the book are often distracted by all the commercials or ads that their feed provides. In our world the feed which is known to be an implanted chip inside a persons head in the novel would translate to the Internet, cell phones, television, Ipod's, etc that are currently available. I think that the main purpose of the feed is to make life less boring. Or so it is interpreted as in the novel AND in the real world.

This generation being considered as more ignorant and/or distracted than the previous one allows this book to illustrate how teenagers are more likely to be ran by the "feed" as opposed to controlling the "feed" that attempts to run their lives. The feed is supposed to be the mainstream where we focus our minds on. It does not allow us to think for ourselves and often distract us from seeing the world in a different perspective.Perhaps Anderson decided to name his work as "feed" because it is our current life source as teenagers. We depend on it to live our current lives as part of a society and to "function" properly.

Furthermore, it is possible that Anderson chose the main theme of his book as tragedy because that in how he sees the teenage life. Due to our responses to our surroundings and/or our lack of thinking development, we have ended up on a depressing and tragic state. In other words, we do not know who we are but we think we do and continue to live our lives in this manner. For example, Titus being a standard teenager who is consumed by his own feed considers his life to be "normal". And this is because everyone around him is living in a similar way. It is until he is introduced to a different perspective of his own world that he begins to slightly reflect on his current responses. Violet is the one who's feed is not functioning properly in the novel, and this is due to her own resistance of it. This resistance or revolution is rather uncertain. Which causes the feed to be stronger than her and practically destroy her. By introducing this character to the book, Anderson was able to provide that real sense of tragedy. The feed impacts our mental state since early age and it is the one that causes the dissatisfaction we experience throughout our lives.

However, the most outstanding aspect of this book was how the main character was unable to understand Violet or her perspective throughout the entire novel. Although she was his girlfriend and he felt a connection with her, there was no real sense of relatedness in the end. It is rather disturbing how the narrator is unable to see the damage the feed is causing to himself and those around him. Nevertheless, the damage that it caused to Violent should have been enough to make him reconsider his perspective on this normal world he believes is right. This just amplifies the tragedy of this book reflecting our own tragic novel, also known as our lives.