I had a posting ready last Thursday, but never got a chance to past it into the blog. It was about a part in the book when things were new and hopeful. Titus and Violet go to the mall and run around and pretend to be interested in all this weird stuff to confuse the feed about what to advertise to them... to become un-classifiable. The scene reminded me so much of the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn when she and they guy in the movie dash into a five and dime and pickpocket a mask. It was deviant but innocent.
Despite the fact that the book inspired me to think for myself, to open my eyes and learn, to ask questions, to care about the world, it left me feeling so sad. There was this moment in Orwell's 1984 when I really hoped that the main character would get to run off to the country side with the women that he met and they would fall in love and get to be together... alas, Feed by M.T. Anderson has crushed me.
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So, before we move on too far into the next book, the Alchemist, I would like to pose a few questions about this book, Feed.
Any opinion of Titus?
Does he love Violet? Did he end up loving her in the end?
Did Titus really have any obligation to Violet? What if anything did he owe her?
Anderson draws a fine line between having Violet want to fit in with the normal kids and have a normal life and then simultaneously not want to associate with normal kids and reject the feed. Is this realistic to you? Does this strike you as a contradiction?
At several points throughout the middle of the book, Titus appeared to expand his worldview, to be on the verge of thinking beyond what society and the feed wanted him to think. This however put him in a tight spot because it meant alienating himself and his friends, it meant in some cases admitting that his life and friends were not as good/cool/smart/etc. as he thought. Did you ever feel sympathetic for Titus? How did you feel when he ended up dating Quendy at the end and when he bought pair after pair of pants?
Violet rebelled against the feed and it jeopardized her chances of getting repaired in the end of the book. Do you feel like she made a mistake? Do you feel like she did the right thing? Was she noble? How would the book have changed if they simply broke up in the end and parted ways but she survived and did not die (or so it is implied) in the end?
What do you think Titus means when he tells Violet (when she is in a coma) "there's one story I'll keep telling you. I'll keep telling it. You're the story. I don't want you to forget. - I'm going to remember. You're still there, as long as I can remember you." How does he view Violet, romantically? how?
OK. Now I feel like a heel. I usually love everything and can just go right on with any story regardless of the mechanic but I got stuck with Feed.
First, this is not to say I didn't like it. That is not the case but I spent a lot of time getting in my own way. I will vent my spleen and then I will be able to address Francophile's thoughtful questions.
1) This book seems like a dramatized essay whose thesis strikes me very much as 'you are being controlled by corporations and media and you love it'. As such I really felt Titus was just a straw man set forth so that we could really see the tragedy that befalls Violet. The fact that Violet is ultimately responsible for her own demise is very much a device to strengthen the nature of her fate as classically tragic.
2) Feedspeak. For the first third of the book I fought the feedspeak and it made it impossible for me to get into the story. The funny thing is that by the end of the novel I loved it and it really helped me stay in the world of the book. I am a big Joss Whedon, Aaron Sorkin and David Mamet fan and I have liked films like Juno where people do not speak like people speak. It is an alternate world and I go with it right away but for the first few sittings of this book I just couldn't do it. Then some switch flipped in my brain and I got it and it grounded the whole thing.
Now to Fraco's questions:
Titus- He is the ingenue who things happen to and who incites incidents but does not offer a lot to the narrative. Ultimately he is us. He is the one who goes with the flow has some trepidations but ultimately sees truth that others do not (Violet). As such we are supposed to see our own failings and exceptionalities reflected in him. He is Holden Caufield, Scout, Gatsby, David Copperfield...etc.
-does he love Violet? Only insomuch as he loves what he has discovered about himself. She represents an aspect of himself he has discovered that he is proud of but not willing adopt. The analog would be the well meaning hypocrite who would really like to do things one way but provides many excuses as to why they can't.
This is what lead me to my feeling of being out of sorts in the sections Franco mentioned. For a while he got off feeling superior to his friends for having a 'thinks-for-herself' girlfriend. Then when he no longer needs to work so hard he totally gives in and goes the opposite direction.
To me Violet is the thesis of the book. She is the embodiment of 'damned-if-you-do-edness'. Her family wanted her off the grid. Dad realized that she could not get anywhere in life if she doesn't have a feed. Because she has the feed she wants to be like the people she sees on the feed. Because of her upbringing she doesn't like what the feed represents and as such rebels against it. The hyper-consumer response to confusing the feed is a perfect set up for a tragic turn. Her 'flaw' as it were is pride in self and individualism. When she achieves it the powers-that-be don't recognize individuals who don't fit into a pattern. Layer that on top of her father's compromising on a cheap feed we have a tragic turn.
The one story that Titus tells in turn is a story lionizing Violet because he can..she can no longer rattle the feed and therefore he can 'love' her without consequence.
Ultimately, I am glad to have read the book but I can't say that I enjoyed it. If I had read this when I was fifteen, I would have lost my mind and would be praising it to the heaven but I might just be too cynical by now.
Does he love her: no.
In fact, I am surprised he even goes back. Not sure how it fits in with who Titus is... how he thinks... etc.
I agree with AHegg - Titus is who he we (society) are and Violet is who we could be.
In the back of the book I read, there was discussion questions - all of which I found ridiculous and a bit embarrassing - but one has stuck with me like a riddle I can't let go until I figure it out. The question was what is the significance of the names. So Link = Abraham Lincoln But what about some of the others. All the others have crazy odd names except Violet. A totally normal name... fitting, but is that what Anderson was going for? Could it be that it is a bastardization of "violent"? And Titus? So off a-googling I go!
and what do I find, but Shakespeare
When General Titus Andronicus returns to Rome after defeating the Goths in a ten-year campaign, the citizens hail him as a hero. Among his captives are the Queen of the Goths, Tamora, and her three sons, Alarbus, Demetrius, and Chiron. Also accompanying her is her lover Aaron, a Moor. Titus has lost many sons in the war and, when the tomb of the Andronicus family is opened to receive the bodies, Titus grieves deeply, saying:
O sacred receptacle [tomb] of my joys,
Sweet cell of virtue and nobility,
How many sons of mine hast thou in store,
That thou wilt never render to me more! (1. 1. 97-100)
........To give them a fitting funeral, Lucius, one of Titus’s three living sons, suggests a human sacrifice. Titus singles out Alarbus, Tamora’s eldest son. She pleads for her son’s life:
Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed,
A mother’s tears in passion for her son:
And if thy sons were ever dear to thee,
O, think my son to be as dear to me! (Lines 110-113)
........Titus replies that “die he must, / To appease their groaning shadows that are gone” (1. 1. 130-131). Lucius and attendants seize Alarbus and remove him to his place of execution. There, they hew his limbs and “feed the sacrificing fire” (1. 1. 150).
Could Feed then have a double meaning. An evil twin, a nasty doppelganger? Could feed mean that Violet is fed to corporate monster?
That consumerism consumes us? And a sacrifice must be made!!!?!!??? And who better than Violet?
Thoughts on this conspiracy theory?
Chelsea, Despite the up and down reviews of the book, I feel that you must seek this one out and give it a read. you are a fast reader like Ahegg and it is a short book.
Tis all that I have in me tonight.
The hour is late. and I have my bed calling.
Take care all.
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