How Feed Portrays Teenagers and Their Decision-Making

By -
Feed was my favorite book we have read so far. I'm really starting to think that M.T. Anderson has a time machine because of his spot-on portrayal of technology from this novel, written in 2002 before the internet and social media began to take off. I was really impressed with how he presented the characters and themes in this novel, and it was a book that I could not put down once I started reading. One problem was obviously the word choice in this novel. It made it challenging to read through quickly, but the language served a specific purpose. I think Anderson used it to show how impressionable teenagers can be when they think something is "cool". For example, Violet uses "salad" as a replacement for happy on page 60 when she says "Maybe these are our salad days." Later on page 68, Titus says "the salad days couldn't last forever." Anderson uses this to show how language can catch on and take different forms based on its perception.

Sticking with the theme of teenagers being impressionable, Anderson shows how pop culture can have an effect on adolescents. Lesions are something that usually have a negative connotation, but when the starts of Oh Wow Thing get them it becomes the "cool" thing. When Calista gets them, Quendy is dismissive of how stupid it looks but then shows up to the party with lots of them. The internet/feed controls the way the youngsters in this novel think and act. When something is advertised, it's made to look "cool" so that the characters feel they have to have it. When Titus goes to buy an upcar, he buys the Dodge after seeing an advertisement with people in bikinis and a party scene. He is directly influenced by the advertisement in that situation. The hairstyles constantly change, and we see that the characters are lost in this world of trying to keep up. On page 279, Titus explains "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 feel that is a good correlation to what we are seeing in today's society. People see things on social media and feel they have to look/act like that to fit in. The internet, and social media in particular, creates a certain image and teenagers feel like they have to live up to that standard. This is particularly impactful on teenage girls that feel they have to conform to standards of beauty. Personally, this book made me think twice about my social media habits and helped me become more conscious about how those platforms impact my thinking.

I really enjoyed this novel and would love to teach it in my classroom. I connect it to George Orwell's 1984 with the way it shows big government and manipulation, but I think this book would be more enjoyable for high school students to read.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing Pains - The Symbolism of the Tree in Speak

By -
I have felt the paralyzing pain of internal disease. The kind of trauma that causes your mouth to curl in and swallow you whole. I, like so many other women, are walking the halls in Melinda’s shoes in “Speak.” I thought Laurie Anderson did a phenomenal job of twisting all of the tribulations a high school girl goes through, into the tree that Melinda is. Whether we’re as strong as an oak or weak as a bush, we have all gone through the disease that strikes Melinda from the inside out. Melinda is like a half-dead tree. Some parts of her strive to blossom and create beauty. Other parts are broken and diseased. Like a dead tree, Melinda needs to save herself and “cut off the damage, [so it] is possible for the tree to grow again” (187). The symbolism of a tree is significant in “Speak.” Trees reflect her growing process. In the beginning, Melinda is a sick and lifeless tree. Her view is negative and dark. She’s so far past repair, bursts of sunlight do her no good. Sunlight would be pe...
Read more

How Starr Goes from Acting to Embracing in The Hate U Give

By -
In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter is caught between two worlds. She lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, but her father sends her and her brothers to a private school where she is surrounded by white people. She talks about acting differently depending on what group she is around, which can create some identity problems. She says on page 11, "Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black." When at Williamson, she sees white kids that think it's cool to engage in black culture, but she knows they don't understand what she goes through in her Garden Heights community. She witnessed her friend Natasha's death when she was 10 years old, and she sees gang activity in her community all the time. When she is among her black friends, like at the party, they tease her for hanging out with the white kids. This reminds me of a Drake song where he says, "I used to get teased for being black, and now I'm...
Read more

Postmodernism in Curious Incident

By -
Before I start writing, I first want to acknowledge that I just really loved this book! It seemed like a lot of the class had trouble enjoying or appreciating the novel because it's so different stylistically, which is understandable, but all of those unique elements helped make the novel more authentic. The main topic I want to focus on (also what I'm writing my paper on) is how a lot of postmodernist elements were used in the novel to make Christopher come to life. While obviously not every postmodern novel is about an autistic kid, I think Haddon really used a lot of these elements to his advantage and they ended up working out really well to characterize Christopher. One of the major postmodern elements which helps this book really craft an authentic portrayal of autism is the fact that it's metafictive. Basically, this means it's a "story within a story." Readers would be extremely limited just reading the parts of the novel which are meant to be C...
Read more