Feed Sparknotes

A Dystopian Story

As one may know, the world of technology increases very rapidly. There are no boundaries when it comes to new innovations. Although technology may have many breakthroughs, it greatly shifts the idea of human relationships and intimacy by changing the way of human interactions. As M.T Anderson depicts in the novel Feed, everyone has a feed and they cannot think for themselves. The chip, a piece of technology implanted into the brain, causes the characters to lack intelligence and not have a mind of their own. The feed then sends them advertisements and suggest that they buy certain products because it helps them feel better. The characters in the novel become so over-reliant on the feed that they are blind to what is actually

going on around them. Privacy invasion plays a big role in this novel, because the corporations have complete access to each person’s mind. While feed becomes innovative, M.T. Anderson reveals the problems all this new technology puts on society. In the novel Feed, he explores how the technological environment in which the characters are placed in shifts their way of living and thinking. The complete destruction of the environment, loss of social values, and the corporate and technological control illustrates why Feed operates as a dystopian novel.
M.T. Anderson uses the destruction of nature as an example of how he views our society. In the novel most of the Earth’s natural environment becomes nonexistent. Their natural world is exploited by the corporations when they create a fake world. Each pod has its own ecosystem, and they use upcars as transportation. In one chapter, Violet and Titus’s father get into a small feud about the forests. Violet argues that trees should not be cut down because they provide air, but Titus’s father says “Do you know how inefficient trees are, next to an air factory?” (Anderson 125). That explains how their world has become so dependent on technology. “They cut down Jefferson Park? That is so like corporate-” (Anderson 126). The earth’s natural sources such as the air and the clouds are now owned by the corporations. Another form of destruction of nature reappears when Titus’s father tells the story of his corporate retreat. He explains how the whales are covered in non-organic lamentation which makes it possible for them to live in the sea. Found in an article it states that “What the characters take comfort in and consider desirable is usually made to sound repellent to us.” (“Let’s Go Dystopia”). That says a lot about our society today, considering it’s inhumane to go fishing for whales. The characters do not appreciate nature, they are so obsessed with the feed that they don’t realize their world is deteriorating around them.
Feed depicts a futuristic world where technology is not just all around us, but inside our heads at all times.

The characters solely rely on their feed for everything they do. The technological environment that Anderson has created in this book resembles the world today, such as technology expanding and making life easier. Technology affects the intelligence of the characters and this book explains how. Everyone in the Feed has lost the ability to read and write, and language has almost deteriorated completely. Instead of the feed making them smarter, they are actually learning less. The characters do not have to study or read. School™ is trademarked, implying that the society in Feed is privatized. The girls change their hairstyles every few minutes or so because their feed tells them that certain style is popular. Artificial lesions and lenticels becomes the new trend. “Because her whole skin was cut up with these artificial lesions. We are all just looking at her. They were all over her.” (Anderson 191). Humans get so caught up on what’s in style or new in technology that they just end up conforming. “A protagonist, often a teen, somehow preserved from the brainwashed docility of most people in his or her society—a rebel—solves some personal or social problem afflicting everyone, and escapes from the future into what we recognize as a more normal world.” (“Let’s Go Dystopia”). The article describes Violet, in the book she tries proving how corrupt the feed is. She even goes further and conducts a project on the feed which creates a customer profile that no one can market. The feed takes away the characters ability to think on their own. The sales people try everything in their power to manipulate the

characters.
The feed tries to make everyone as passive as possible and intends to eliminate all active users. The corporation want complete control over everyone who has the feed. Of course there are people who strongly oppose the use of the feed. For instance, while they are at a party and an old man touches them and their feeds instantly start broadcasting. The characters begin to yell, “We enter a time of calamity” (Anderson, 38) and the characters could not control it. The next morning, they find themselves laying in a hospital bed with their feeds shut down. At that moment, most of the characters did not know how to function without their feed. The corporations then enter their dreams and run tests on them. The character’s privacy is completely invaded. It goes to show that the corporations have no boundaries when it comes to the feed. The feed has a way of trying to force characters into buying things and make it seem like its perfect for the characters. As explained in an article, “M.T. Anderson’s Feed show how unrestrained industry often relies on manipulation and herd mentality, an unspeakably grim encroachment on the individual. When the important thing is selling and buying, the individual becomes nothing more than consumer or worker.” (“Teaching Dystopian Literature to a Consumer Class”). Although Violet avoids control from the feed, she ultimately needs the corporations help in order for her to survive. She receives a cheaper version of the feed when she was younger. That makes it difficult for her to recover properly from the hacking, and eventually causes her demise. In this book Anderson proved that technology does not always have a positive outcome.