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Part 3: Nudging
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Feed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Corporations and Consumerism
Apathy, Happiness, and Satisfaction
Resistance
Class and Segregation
The Environment
Summary
Analysis
One day, Violet chats Titus to explain that she’s working on a new project. They agree to meet at the mall. There, Titus sees that Violet is wearing a shirt to show off her new lesion, which Titus thinks looks cool. He remembers that celebrities have been showing off their lesions lately.
It’s a sign of Violet’s desire to fit in with her new friends that she shows off her lesions—which are rapidly becoming hip and even desirable, despite very recently having prevented them from gaining entrance to a club.
Themes
Violet explains that information about everything she buys is gathered by corporations and used to build a consumer taste profile for her. Violet wants to create “a customer profile that’s so screwed, no one can market to it.” She boasts, “I’m not going to let them catalog me.”
Violet clearly dislikes her feed, but she thinks that she can dismantle it “from the inside,” by shopping for things that have nothing in common. It’s a strange paradox that Violet thinks she can escape the influence of the feed by shopping more rather than less—showing how difficult it is for people to resist the consumer culture in meaningful ways.
Themes
Violet and Titus walk around the mall, trying out different products—everything from searchlights to rugs. They listen to new music, and Violet remarks that “there’s no difference between a song and an advertising jingle anymore.” They go to clothing stores and get dinner.
Violet points out that the only purpose of art anymore is to sell people products. The very fact that shopping is the characters’ primary mode of recreation is telling in its own right.
Themes
At dinner, Titus asks Violet why she never talks about her father. Violet explains that it costs a lot of money to fly to the moon—more than her father can afford. Then, Violet tells Titus to drop her off at the feed technician’s office. Titus drops her off, but just before he drives away, he notices that she’s pulling and pinching the skin on her elbow.
It’s a sign of Violet’s trust in Titus that she admits she’s from a less well-off family than his—but also demonstrates her insecurity that she felt she had to hide this. The passage also foreshadows the complications that later arise as a result of Violet’s feed malfunctions.
Themes
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