Homework 13- Feed B

“Art is not a Mirror with which to reflect the World. It is a Hammer with which to shape it." -Bert Brecht

In my opinion, Feed is a work of art. One might doubt that a book can be art, but Feed has proven those otherwise. Referring to the above quote, I believe that Feed is actually a mirror with which we reflect OUR current world. It could also be a hammer, however, since it is an allegory of our current day society, I believe it to be more of a mirror. Feed is reflecting what happens in our society with some twists. The mirror Feed reflects on could be like one of those fun house mirrors, it reflects the image while adding a twist to it. Nether less I believe Feed is a mirror because in the novel there are so many parallels between our society and their society. M.T Anderson wanted readers to connect Feed to our daily lives, which he succeeded in doing.

I also believe Feed is a work of art because of the way the words flow into each other, and the organization of the plot. Anderson clearly thought out what he wanted to write, and how all the characters would interact with each other. Art doesn’t have to be a painting on the wall, it can be a novel filled with words, which is what Feed is. I believe that in the case of Feed, having art as a mirror with which to reflect our world is a good thing. Most people are ignorant or oblivious, and cannot see what is happening before their very own eyes. With Feed mirroring our society, people can finally open their eyes to how technologically driven our society is as a whole. In the same way, Feed can act as a hammer with which to use to build our foundation. Now that we are aware of our over use of digitalization, we can use Feed as an example of how to change our daily use. Now that we saw a dramatized consequence of the overuse of technology, we can learn to limit our use in our daily lives.

I don’t believe that Anderson had a specific age group in his mind when creating Feed, however he was targeting to an older audience. I believe that he figured more adults would be willing to read this book than teenagers, because adults did not have as much technology back then as we teenagers do now. However, I think he believe that if a teenager was to indeed read this book, as we did, we might be able to connect to the lives of the characters and change our ways. I also believe this book would be classified under the genre of realistic fiction, because even though it is a work of fiction, it is also extremely close to reality and our society.