Feed (p. 20-40)
"The Nose Grid" & "The Moon is in the House of Boring"
Summary
The Nose Grid
- Link and Quendy ask the girl, whom Titus is watching, if Quendy's leisure is too noticeable. She replies that it is not, because the leisure is on the edge of her face framing it.
- They all agree with the girl; the boys start to talk/flirt with her, and Titus gets even more fascinated with her.
The Moon is in the House of Boring
- The girl, whose name is Violet, reluctantly agrees to join them, and they all talk while walking to a bar (which ends up being closed).
- On the way back to the hotel from shopping, they notice a protest against the feed.
- At the Rumble Spot, an old man approaches them and starts to yell, "We enter a time of calamity!" (Anderson 37), then, touches Titus with a metal handle, who starts to repeat this phrase. Then, Violet, Link, and Marty are all repeating this phrase, when the police comes in and shuts down their feeds.
Literary Lenses
New Historicism/Cultural Studies
1. The culture of waste
- “Quendy bought some shoes, but the minute she walked out of the store she didn’t like them anymore” (Anderson 31).
2. People who are against technology
- “The old man was standing by our side, […] he yelled: ‘We enter a time of calamity’” (Anderson 37).
- "Of couse, he didn't have any idea what the hell she was talking about either" (Anderson 23).
Feminism
1. Perception of women
- "'Nobody cares about a stupid lesion'" (Anderson 21).
- "She and the girls spent the rest of the hour fixing Quendy's hair to showcase the lesion" (Anderson 24).
- "She was now completely yauch on all of our meters" (Anderson 23).
2. Sisterhood
- "'Hon,' said Calista, 'it's not spreading'" (Anderson 20).
- "[...] Except with the girls, who I could tell had started to chat with each other like some ants after someone's buried a missionary alive in the middle of their hill" (Anderson 24).
- "After we were walking for a few minutes, it was, on the scale, maybe closer to hate, because Marty and Link and I were walking around Violet and asking her all these questions, [...] and I don't think the other girls really were too skip about walking behind us". (Anderson 30).
Discussion question
On page 47, Titus states, “And it’s really great to know everything about everything whenever you want, to have it just like, in our brain, just sitting there.” Do you agree with this? Why or why not?
Essential questions
1. How does Feed illustrate the degeneration of human thought and language?
- Violet's use of language make them think that she is weird. Titus also says that they did not know what she was talking about.
- Titus focus only on the physical/material side of his romantic relationships. He emphasizes a lot on Violet's beauty, and only when he starts to be very interested in Violet, he then states that, "That was why I kept looking at the girl in gray, and started to want, more than anything else that night, to be with her" (Anderson 25).
- “I wanted to buy some things but I didn’t know what they were” (Anderson 30).
"He said I was so null it was like ordering nothing" (Anderson 31).
Works Cited
Anderson, M. T. Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2010. Kindle file.
April 5th, 2016
Cara Zambrano