Feed

M.T. Anderson's Feed took me a while to get into but once I did it really got me emotionally involved. At first, the exaggerated teenage slang turned me off to the book but I eventually got used to it and soon it was just funny hearing about how "meg cool" things were instead of being kind of annoying.

It was a very interesting look at the possible, perhaps even probable, outcome of human's actions on earth. Anderson takes some very current mindsets and situations, both socially and politically, and shows a futuristic outcome that seems to lead to the end of human civilization. The actions of the U.S. for instance, around the world but especially now in Iraq are very poignant in this story. Many people believe that the country is doing things that are wrong for their own self interest and not paying attention to the fact that the rest of the world can't stand us. At one point in the book, the U.N type international group chastises America and the government responds by throwing back an obviously weightless threat full of "ummms" and "ahhhhhs." In this case, even the public faces of the government have stopped trying to at least look like they know what they are doing and have things under control. Another political thing that caught me was the fact that some countries had closed their boarders to Americans. I think that this is a very strong possibility. I did some traveling in the middle east and going across borders with an American passport was not very comfortable, I was obviously not liked or wanted in some places. Even in Egypt, I had a little bit of a hard time. Though that may have been because I had traveled in Israel. These political elements seemed to be a comment on the nation's actions today put in a safer medium and hidden by the fantastical futuristic elements.

The social and commercial elements are at the heart of the story however. The "feed" that is connected to most people's brains exaggerates our current dependency on commercial products. Some aspects are humorous in the book like the fact that clouds and school are the property of companies and have to have the trademark symbol after them. But other aspects are not really funny at all. Companies have direct links to your brain. They can see what you want, what you have, what you have spent, what you have not spent, etc... In this world our privacy has been voluntarily given up for the ease of shopping. There are other things the feed does like allow you to look things up and basically always have an encyclopedia in your head but even this seems to have negative effects. People no longer have the need to think, they can just look things up whenever they want. The people in the story, consequently, don't ever think about things and when they are met with opportunities to, they shun them because it is too difficult. Even most of the parents do this.

Like the political commentary, this acts as a social commentary about today. Companies and their marketing are gaining more and more influence in our lives. People are very much moved by what is valued or not valued in the marketplace. For instance, everyone has to have an Ipod, but they are one of the worst mp3 players out there. But I have one too. Brand name clothes and products of that nature hold so much sway and actually create what is fashionable and what is not. This way fashion is always changing and people are always buying. This is seen in an extreme way in the story when styles change literally every week.

The powerful effect of the control the companies have taken is really seen when the characters don't even seem bothered that the feeds have created lesions on their bodies. They allow even their health to be forfeited for the ability to be hooked up to the market. The TV stars start getting lesions, so they became in fashion and cool. Its crazy to a reader now, but I'm not sure that it's that far fetched. We get our ideas of fashion and "cool" from some pretty strange places. Baggy pants for instance, comes straight from prison as if thats a "cool" place.


The heartlessness of the companies is shown when Violet is denied financial aid to repair her feed. The feed that the company put in her brain is killing her and nobody will help her. Its amazing to think about but how many times are people denied healthcare? Again, it may not be that far fetched.

To get away from the commentary on modern society I want to talk a little about the emotional relationship between Titus and Violet. I was tremendously moved by the book when Titus began separating himself from Violet. Anderson wrote the emotions really powerfully. So powerfully in fact that while reading that section I began to feel a separation between my fiance and I; even though nothing was wrong. Violet's desperation to have someone to share her last days alive with and Titus' struggle to separate himself from emotions that he found impossible to deal with was very powerful. These emotions are hard for anyone, even today, but in a world where nobody is expected to deal with these issues and nobody gets any sympathy it becomes unbearable. I had to sympathize with Titus even while I was terribly angry at him for not being there for Violet. In a similar situation as Violet's, I could see myself pulling away from people and not wanting them to be burdened but Violet went all out to have someone to share her life with. This pulled me both ways, of course she craves human connection but it is a lot to ask of a person. To fall in love with someone that is going to die. A lot to ask.

Monster

Walter Dean Myers' YA novel Monster is a great story about a young man on trial for being an accomplice to a robbery that resulted in the death of a store clerk. What is most interesting is that the narrator writes the story as a screenplay in script form. I haven't had a lot of experience reading scripts so I was unsure about the style at first but it ended up being a very vivid way to experience the story.

The style made the story read easily and quickly. It was, of course, heavy on the dialogue which made the story really intense (like a movie). The stage and camera directions also made the images come alive. It helped me, as the reader, to really visualize the story. I could see the jail cell and hear the prisoners crying at night, and I could sense the tension and suspense in the court room.

It would be interesting to see this adapted for the screen, not much work would have to be done. But, the courtroom drama has been overdone and the title Monster has been taken by that crazy movie that destroyed my idea of Charlize Theron.

The ending, like a movie, was happy which added to the effect of the script but the part that was really interesting was the reaction of the lawyer O'brien at the end of the trial. Steve moves to hug her and she grabs her stuff and leaves. Throughout the story it us unclear what she thinks about Steve. She never says that she believes him and this action at the end makes me think that she might be upset about the outcome. Or, perhaps she just tries to keep an emotional distance from her cases and therefore doesn't want to hug her client. I often wonder how defense lawyers deal with these kind of cases. Do they know when their clients are guilty and defend them anyway? It's certainly a moral issue that I wouldn't want to deal with.

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this book.

Ender's Game

One of the most interesting elements of Ender's Game is its treatment of children as opposed to adults. In the study of children's and adolescent literature we begin with a time when the child sphere of existence as we view it today didnt really exist. Children were seen merely as small versions of adults with no other seperating attributes. For this reason, they were not treated differently than adults and were not catered to in literature seperately than adults.

Ender's Game, in many ways, harkens back to that mindset. Children are expected to handle many challenges, both physical and emotional, that would be considered difficult even for adults in today's society. The "games" that the students at the battle school partake in become so serious that they are not really games at all. On an intellectual level, children in the story are expected to perform at an even higher level than adults.

At the same time, children are not nurtured at all by the adults in this story. Indeed, the opposite is true. Ender is specifically and purposefull kept from any kind of nurturing behavior from adults so that he may learn to wholly and completely rely on himself. The idea of self reliance is a common element of YA but in Ender's Game, it is taken to the extreme.

The children are also capable of evil acts, as we see most clearly in Peter, but also in Bonzo and even in Ender. The Romanticized innocent little angel is nowhere to be found in Ender's world. Children are not innocent, they are not protected by adults and they are not treated any differently than adults.

Keesha's House

Keesha's House gives a very interesting perspective into some issues that young people face. I think that it works to give adult readers an insight into the thoughts and emotions of young people that might otherwise be overlooked as hoodlums. At the same time, when it switches to the adult's perspectives, it gives young readers a look at adults and their feelings about kids. These aspects allow the two sides to perhaps hear something that they wouldn't say or hear in other circumstances.

I think casting the home owner Joe as a male character is also interesting. A man letting a bunch of teenage girls live in his home could certainly be interpreted less than innocently. But Joe is completely noble in his desire to help these kids and he stands in stark contrast to most of the other adult male characters in the story. There is Keesha's drunk of a father, Harris' homophobic bigot father, and one of the other father's, whose name I can't remember right now, is in jail. So, getting a positive male role model in the form of Joe becomes a very powerful tool in this story. Especially since males are not generally the more nourishing sex. I suppose that what Joe does isn't necessarily nourishing, it could be seen more as protection and providing, which would be his sex's socially excepted role. Hmmmm.

Keesha, on the other hand, functions as the opposite of most the adult female characters who are weak, with the exception perhaps, of Laura (Stephie's mother). Keesha decides that she will be strong and find a way to survive. She finds Joe's house and declares that she won't let anyone else decide what happens with her body. Meanwhile, the adult female characters allow their husbands to abuse their children or stand by while their husband disowns a child because he is gay. Again, as in the other books discussed here, the parents in this story are terrible adult and parental role models.

The way the characters all connect by the end is made interesting by the poetic style that Frost utilizes. The characters start using the last line of the previous poem to begin their poem. This, obviously, illustrates how the issues that each one of the characters are facing connects them. Knowing that other people are going through similar things can give them some comfort and even help them realize that there are ways for things to get better. Besides this aspect however, the poetic form of the story didn't add much for me. Hearing the individual voices added to the characterization but the story didn't need poetry to do that necessarily.