Character Clues

Character Analysis

Speech and Dialogue

What these characters say (or m-chat) to each other tells us a lot about the people we're dealing with. And in Feed, we deal a whole lot with idiots.

Here's Marty, for example: "'Units!' said Marty. 'Into the—in here—fuck yeah, man—into the living room. Kay kay kay kay. Right in here'" (31.16). We sure hope the future of the human race doesn't rest with Marty, is all we're saying.

Similarly, we get major smart vibes from Violet's words. Like when she first meets Quendy, she says:

The face [...] is a grid. The two big imaginary lines are one down the center of the face and one just across the top of the cheeks. This is my theory, anyway. The nose is where those lines intersect. The more a lesion interferes with those lines, the more noticeable it is. (4.23)

She may only be talking about lesions, but even so we can tell that she's more educated, more intelligent, and more curious than Titus and his friends.

Actions

From jaunts to the moon to playing darts with hypodermic needles in the hospital, the actions of these kids tell us that they're a self-centered, entitled bunch of you-know-whats. They're constantly too cool for school, fighting off their boredom with live electrical wires and going into "mal," a sort of electronic high that temporarily scrambles their brains.

The fact that we only see Titus going into mal after he finds out the Violet is super ill tells us that he's maybe slightly above his friends—and luckily it isn'tall self-centeredness and entitlement with Titus. He also has his caring moments, like when he tells Violet that he'll arrange for most of the items on her bucket list (although he does later renege).

In the end, Titus sits by Violet's bedside after she's brain dead, telling her stories and crying. As far as actions go, it's about the most notable one in the book.

Clothing

In a world where fashions go in and out of style literally in minutes, you can bet that what people are wearing show us how hip (or not) that they are. Calista, Quendy, and Loga all sport the latest in Riot Gear fashions after everyone dreams of the riots happening halfway across the world, giving us a big clue that they don't have one (a clue, that is, about the significance of the real riots).

On the other hand, when we first see Violet, she's wearing something that Titus's friends can't identify: a wool dress. This emphasizes her old-fashioned sensibility and her rebelliousness. She doesn't have to wear the latest styles; she's mostly happy grooving to her own beat.