thesis statement for the book feed

by M.T. Anderson

Feed analysis.

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Though themes of environment, apathy, advertising, resistance, and consumerism are prevalent in Feed ’s futuristic world, this novel reminds us that today’s society is not so different from the society depicted in M.T. Anderson ’s world. The rise of social media, advertising partnerships (the likes of which can be seen on Amazon and Facebook today), and environmental debates are at the forefront of national and worldwide conversations today. This novel therefore serves as a tantalizing, sobering, and frightening reminder that we, as a society, do not stand too far apart from the dystopian futures we read about in books and watch on television.

The titular Feed dominates life in this futuristic world. Though the Feed offers roughly the same services as today’s modern computers, it exists as an implant, rather than a stationary box or network. The implantation of the Feed results in constant stimulus. Titus and his friends are permanently bombarded with advertisements, promotions, and commercials—all of which are tailored to their specific needs and likes. So present is the Feed that when Titus and Violet momentarily lose their Feeds to the hacker, they struggle to entertain themselves. This intense dependency on the Feed is reflective of our own dependency upon technology and our phones. With entertainment, news, and social media permanently available, the parallels between Feed and our current world are not difficult to notice.

In addition to themes of technology and availability, Feed toys with the idea of big business. The political and social environment in Feed is completely dominated by big businesses, which have trademarked and copyrighted things such as “clouds” and “school.” The introduction of the Feed has essentially made schools obsolete. As the Feed offers its users access to unlimited amounts of data, facts, and information, there really is no need for students to study for exams or answer homework questions. (Once again, M.T. Anderson presents a world that is not too far from our own. Search engines and online study guides have transformed education; with the Internet at our fingertips, all information is only a few keyboard taps and mouse clicks away.) M.T. Anderson also subliminally approaches ideas of class/socioeconomic systems. We learn that Violet’s Feed was not installed as early as Titus’ because her family could not afford it. Additionally, though her father was fundamentally against the idea of the Feed, we learn that he choose to have it installed to help Violet advance in life; he knew that her opportunities for success would be severely limited if she were not on the Feed.

Though it is implied that Titus and his friends are privileged and upper-class citizens, there is little mention of citizens that are lower-class and unable to afford the Feed. It is suggested, however, that the Feed directly correlates to access, affluence, and opportunities. The implications of class and the role that it plays in M.T. Anderson’s world are once again very reflective of our own class divides. Today, education and workforces are dominated by technology. Technological savvy is critical for survival in the educational and professional realms. The tech that is often required for this survival and success, however, does not come cheap. Poorer or underprivileged families—like Violet’s—are therefore severely disadvantaged by systems that place primary importance in access to technological resources.

In addition to political and social degradation, the environmental impacts of the Feed are heavily implied. Overpopulation has resulted in the destruction of forests, which has subsequently lead to the creation of “air factories" (buildings which quite literally produce breathable oxygen). Due to the reckless and negligent disposal of waste, the seas have become so toxic that beaches are hazardous; characters can only visit the beach with a hazmat suit.

Consumerism and capitalism run rampant in Feed . Due to the Feed’s constant displays of advertisements and promotions, citizens in this futuristic world have become nothing more than consumers. In this world, a person’s only purpose is to buy products and then funnel money into the big business corporations that dominate and control the country. Everything is marketed, itemized, and purchasable. The plausibility of this world—part of which has already come to fruition in our real world—is what makes M.T. Anderson’s novel so tantalizingly eerie. Perhaps the book's most powerful message comes from its closing passages. In the final pages of the book, as Violet is expiring and malfunctioning, Titus finally appears to show genuine emotional depth for her. Though he had previously viewed her as a nuisance—an embarrassment that was detracting from his ability to enjoy the Feed—Violet’s imminent death has helped Titus to gain some perspective on his consumeristic lifestyle.

In the final pages of the book, Titus finally stops viewing Violet as a product—as something to be used and then discarded after its usefulness has ended. Rather, Titus attempts to connect with Violet by telling her a story. The story, which is based off of their own tumultuous relationship, suggests that Titus is going to attempt to resist the Feed as much as he can—just as Violet once attempted to do. The novel’s conclusion—a Feed ad that slowly fades away—can be interpreted in a few ways. It could be suggestive of the inevitable annihilation of this unsustainable society. It could represent Violet’s death. Or, it could represent Violet's and Titus’ collective attempt to escape the Feed’s constant and overbearing influence. The uncertainty and ambiguity of this final passage is powerful, as it is suggestive of both Titus’ uncertain future and the uncertain future of his society.

Anderson uses Feed as a plea to his 21st century readers. Though it may be too late for Violet or even Titus to save their world (or themselves), Anderson clearly hopes that this dark tale will inspire readers to resist the controlling and potent culture of consumerism.

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Feed Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Feed is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Space is so silent and empty so you need the noise of your friends for comfort.

At the end of Feed Part 3: Nudging, the narrator describes a TV show entitled “Amurica: A Portrait in Geezers.” The program presents the way nature looked like in the past, with animals and birds being a common sight and with countless species of...

Which parent is an enabler?

Titus’s mother is an enabler.

Study Guide for Feed

Feed study guide contains a biography of M.T. Anderson, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• Feed Summary
• Character List

Essays for Feed

Feed essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Feed by M.T. Anderson.

• How Violet Stands Apart: Cause and Effect Essay on Feed
• Devolution of Human Communication Through Technology: An Analysis of the Society in 'Feed'
• Capitalism and Consumerism Effects on the Division of Social Classes

Wikipedia Entries for Feed

• Introduction

• Ask LitCharts AI
• Discussion Question Generator
• Essay Prompt Generator
• Quiz Question Generator

• Literature Guides
• Poetry Guides
• Shakespeare Translations
• Literary Terms

M. T. Anderson

Anderson’s novel takes place in a futuristic version of America in which corporations have replaced the government as the most powerful societal institution. In the novel’s dystopian vision of the future, corporations exert control over American citizens by convincing them to spend all their money on products they don’t need, and all their time thinking about what to buy next. Almost all Americans have tiny devices implanted in their brains, called “ feeds ,” which corporations use to manipulate their customers through the use of advertisements. Each feed bombards its user with an endless stream of personalized ads, nudging them into a lifestyle of constant consumption. As powerful as these corporations are, Feed shows their position to be inherently unstable—and, as the book ends, on the verge of collapse.

Corporations seem to enjoy limitless power over the characters in Feed . The book’s narrator, Titus , explains that corporations are responsible for implanting feeds in babies’ brains when they’re born. Because children grow up with the feed, they become almost completely dependent on the feed for information and entertainment. But corporate control doesn’t end with the feed. Titus goes on to explain that corporations have also taken control over the school system—now called School™—and use it as an opportunity to train young people to be eager, loyal consumers for the rest for their lives (Titus explains, evidently blind to the irony, that corporations see education as an “investment in tomorrow”). Finally, corporations enjoy unlimited power because they use their influence to buy politicians who will protect corporations’ rights to “free trade.” The result of corporate control is that Titus and his peers spend all their money buying the products that corporations want them to buy. This, in turn, allows the corporations to continue exercising control, by producing more products to sell, creating more education propaganda, and buying more politicians. In short, the consumption of goods fuels an endless, cyclical process of corporate expansion.

Although the widespread culture of consumerism strengthens corporations, Feed shows that it also runs the risk of destroying them, meaning that corporations are, in a sense, victims of their own success. The book explores this contradiction in two main ways. First, constant corporate expansion has dire consequences for the natural world. There are hints throughout the novel that unchecked pollution and development are endangering not just other species, but the human race itself, as temperatures never fall below 100 degrees, people’s skin peels off, and natural disasters caused by corporate activity routinely kill thousands at a time. The implication is that the culture of consumerism is self-destructive, to the point where it kills the very consumers it’s supposed to be serving. But in addition to showing that consumerism is dangerous to human life, Feed shows that it is a threat to human happiness, simply because in order to keep people consuming, corporations need to keep their customers unhappy . For example, if Titus were to buy a car that made him truly, lastingly happy, then he’d stop shopping for cars altogether, and he’d also stop giving money to corporations. From the perspective of corporations, this possibility is unacceptable. Corporations depend on people like Titus being perpetually slightly dissatisfied. Consumers need to be just unhappy enough that they keep buying things—not so unhappy that they give up on consumerism altogether—but happy enough to believe that the next car or shirt or sweater vest they purchase could solve all their problems. The result is that some consumers, including Titus by the end of the novel, do come to question the practice of consumerism itself: after years of being unsatisfied by their purchases, they become disillusioned with the corporations who’ve promised, and failed, to make them happy.

The dystopian corporate society Anderson writes about is powerful, yet unstable. It depends upon wreaking environmental havoc on the world, and it only works when it keeps its supposed beneficiaries (the consumers) unsatisfied. This corporation-run world is always teetering on the verge of collapse and, paradoxically, the more powerful it gets, the more precarious its position becomes. Indeed, by the end of the novel, the entire world is gearing up for war with the United States in response to its renegade corporatism, as the concrete, environmental effects of this ideology have become too serious to ignore. Anderson further implies that consumers themselves—not just the victims of consumerism around the world—might start to opt out of the consumer culture. However, he suggests that a lifetime of brainwashing may have left Titus and others like him unable to imagine life without their feeds and the mindless cycle of consumption the feeds reinforce.

Corporations and Consumerism ThemeTracker

Corporations and Consumerism Quotes in Feed

But the braggest thing about the feed, the thing that made it really big, is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are.

"It is not the will of the American people, the people of this great nation, to believe the allegations that were made by these corporate “watch” organizations, which are not the majority of the American people, I repeat not, and aren't its will. It is our duty as Americans, and as a nation dedicated to freedom and free commerce, to stand behind our fellow Americans and not cast . . . things at them. Stones, for example. The first stone. By this I mean that we shouldn’t think that there are any truth to the rumors that the lesions are the result of any activity of American industry.

Also, it's good because that way we know that the big corps are made up of real human beings, and not just jerks out for money, because taking care of children, they care about America's future. It's an investment in tomorrow. When no one was going to pay for the public schools anymore and they were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so that all of them could have computers and pizza for lunch and stuff, which they gave for free, and now we do stuff in classes about how to work technology and how to find bargains and what's the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom.

"You know what he was in?" said my dad. "Remember Virtual Blast? He played the fifth Navy Seal, with the croup. You know, coughing." "He was in the feature with all the crazy utensils," said my mother. "A few years ago? That one? He was the doorman in the pillbox hat." I had already pulled up a list of his feed-features and I was going over them. None of them got more than two stars.

"He was beaten to death at the club. We saw it. The police, remember? They beat him over the head." She reached out and took my arm. My father walked toward us across the pavement, waving. The plastic flags were flapping in the artificial wind while Muzak came out of heaven.

I bought the Dodge.

He said in a high-pitched voice, like a teensy-weensy kind of voice, "Ooooooh! Observe the remarkable verdure! Little friend, I am master of all I survey."

She said she had a theory that everything was better if you delayed it. She had this whole thing about self-control, okay, and the importance of self-control. For example, she said, when she bought something, she wouldn't let herself order it for a long time. Then she would just go to the purchase site and show it to herself. Then she'd let herself get fed the sense-sim, you know, she'd let herself know how it would feel, or what it would smell like. Then she would go away and wouldn't look for a week.

You know, I think death is shallower now. It used to be a hole you fell into and kept falling. Now it's just a blank.

And we are the nation of dreams. We are seers. We are wizards. We speak in visions. Our letters are like flocks of doves, released from under our hats. We have only to stretch out our hand and desire, and what we wish for settles like a kerchief in our palm. We are a race of sorcerers, enchanters. We are Atlantis. We are the wizard-isle of Mu.

What we wish for, is ours.

Someone once said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich guy to get into heaven. There is a city. A marketplace. Camels. Arabs. The upcar shoots overhead, and they duck. Yeah, sure. Now we know that the "eye of the needle" is just another name for a gate in Jerusalem-and with the Swarp XE-11’s mega-lepton lift and electrokinetic gyro stasis, […] getting through the gate just won't be a problem anymore. The Swarp XE-11: You can take it with you.

"This top is the Watts Riot top." Violet said, "I can never keep any of the riots straight. Which one was the Watts riot?" Calista and Loga stopped and looked at her. I could feel them flashing chat. "Like, a riot," said Calista. "I don't know, Violet. Like, when people start breaking windows and beating each other up, and they have to call in the cops. A riot. You know. Riot?"

The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.

Violet was screaming, "Look at us! You don't hate the feed! You are feed! You're feed! You're being eaten! You're raised for food! Look at what you've made yourselves!" She pointed at Quendy, and went, "She’s a monster! A monster!"

It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it. I felt like I'd been running toward it for a long time.

"It's almost time for foosball. It will be a gala. Go along, little child. Go back and hang with the eloi." "What are the eloi?" "It's a reference," he said, snotty. "It's from The Time Machine . H. G. Wells." I stepped closer to him. "What does it mean?" I asked. "Because I'm sick of—" "Read it." "I'm sick of being told I'm stupid." "So read it, and you'll know." "Tell me." "Read it."

"It's about this meg normal guy, who doesn't think about anything until one wacky day, when he meets a dissident with a heart of gold." I said, "Set against the backdrop of America in its final days, it's the high-spirited story of their love together, it's laugh-out-loud funny, really heartwarming, and a visual feast." I picked up her hand and held it to my lips. I whispered to her fingers. "Together, the two crazy kids grow, have madcap escapades, and learn an important lesson about love. They learn to resist the feed. Rated PG-13. For language," I whispered, "and mild sexual situations." I sat in her room, by her side, and she stared at the ceiling. I held her hand. On a screen, her heart was barely beating. I could see my face, crying, in her blank eye.

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Feed Introduction

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."

Meet Titus, our chronically bored and tragically hip main character. Replace "the moon" with "the mall" or "the movies" or "Fort Lauderdale," and he'd be just like you, with one big difference: he has the feed, which is a sort of super-Internet that's wired directly into his brain. (Okay, we know this doesn't sound so futuristic, but Feed  was written in 2002.)

Titus lives in a futuristic society that is so high-tech it would make Bill Gates weep. We're talking the very cutting edge in advanced gadgetry, like flying cars and extra arms you can add onto your shoulders to Amaze Your Friends at Parties. But it's not all shiny spaceships and nano-rainbows. Of course not: this is YA literature of the 21 st century. M.T. Anderson  creates a bleak dystopia , a nightmarish vision of a near-future America where the environment's trashed, all the forests are gone, and people's skin is falling off. But, hey! NBD. There's always the feed to keep you occupied with big fun games, and tons of swag to buy, like tachyon shorts, Top Quark swimming pools, and fake birds.

In the midst of all this, Titus meets Violet, the girl of his dreams. Yay! Yay, that is, until someone hacks their feeds and Violet's body starts to shut down. Ordinarily, this would also be NBD—high-tech futuristic society and all—but, because her family doesn't have any money, the corporations refuse to help her. (This is how you know Feed  doesn't take place in our world. /sarcasm.)

If you happen to be a stuffy librarian slash parent slash teacher-type, here's some good news: Feed  was nominated for a National Book Award. That's how you know it's literature. And if you're just jonesing for some dystopian fiction á la The Giver  and The Hunger Games , the  Feed  should be just your jam. 

What is Feed About and Why Should I Care?

In case you didn't pick it up from the Nutshell, here's a major reason to care: you're already living in the feed.

Sure, it's a slightly lower tech version—your feed is in your pocket on a smartphone rather than mainlined directly into your brain, but we're getting pretty close. When M.T. Anderson wrote this book in 2002, the Internet was definitely a Thing, but with one major difference: most of today's major social networking sites were still tiny twinkles in their creator's eyes. Instagram? Facebook? We had to get by with Friendster . It was the dark ages, yo.

Sure, television, cable, radio, and magazines did a pretty good job of telling us what to think and how to be cool, but social networking sites basically boosted the reach of traditional media to the Nth power with the added bonus of a more individualized experience and connectivity with your peers.

At the heart of this experience is the competition for your dollars. You're supposed to think that it's all about entertainment and content, but the puppeteer twitching the strings is corporations that are all about advertising and market share. And teens happen to be an especially attractive market. Want to be popular? Avoid being an outcast? Of course you do. And if you buy these shoes/that shirt/this skin cream, your dreams will come true.

So, we may not have this type of hyped-up Internet experience right inside our heads, but we're still definitely part of the feed—a feed that just might be feeding  on us.

And that's food for thought. 

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W hy's T his F unny?

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Feed — Feed By M T Anderson Summary

Feed by M T Anderson Summary

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Published: Mar 19, 2024

Words: 491 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

The loss of individuality, the consequences of overreliance on technology, the devastating consequences, a powerful cautionary tale.

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