More about Feed

I have now progressed in Feed, by MT Anderson, and gotten to know more about Titus and his friends. Unfortunately, the book did not completely live up to my expectations, but is still enjoyable to read. The main idea of Feed, is present throughout the story (which is a futuristic/satirical/dystopian novel that focuses on a "feed" in the brain that controls the characters' ways of life, turning them into foolish and illogical consumers). The language of the book, though, is unconventional. Unlike other science fiction books, it uses futuristic language to show how simple the characters' thinking patterns have become. For example, instead of saying that "the trip to the moon wasn't fun" a character might say "the moon like turned out to like be meg mal". This adds depth to the story, but gets annoying after only a few pages.

The main character in Feed is Titus, a teenager who represents what America has become. He goes to School™, yet cannot read. Titus is educated by corporate interests that tell students how to spend "wisely". He and his group of friends stand no chance to peer pressure, doing whatever is supposed to be cool at the moment. After meeting a girl named Violet who is trying to resist the feed, Titus realizes just how dull he has become. Titus subconsciously wants to change himself for the better, but is unable to with the sheer amount of advertising and propaganda that is thrown at him.

On the other hand, Violet is trying to actively resist the feed. She goes to hundreds of stores asking for random items, so she would be characterized "in a customer profile that just doesn't exist". Her efforts do not seem to be bringing about any kind of major change to society, but show how hopeless the situation is. With her father being a professor of ancient languages (modern programming languages), she has a very different view of the feed than most other people. Her father cannot afford an implanted feed, and talks in such a way that the feed will not understand him.

More than to advance a specific plot, the characters in feed represent a society saturated in perpetual product cravings. I look forward to figuring out more of the story.