Literary Analysis of "Feed", authored by M. T. Anderson

Throughout the entire book the readers constantly see Violet’s need to defy the system and go against the norms of their society. She attempts multiple times to trick the corporations with the intentions of keeping the old world alive, the natural world. We see how nothing seems to stop her from doing this, even her own health, after her initial start of tricking the corporation it is seen that her body begins to malfunction. It started with her foot and moved on to her arms, head, and eventually speaking ability, yet none of this seemed to deter her from wanting to challenge the corporations and the feed. Ever since she was introduced as a character into the book, it was very obvious to the audience that she was different from the rest of the teenagers. Even though she later becomes friends with them and does start to conform a little bit, there is never a moment where she is depicted as completely one of them. She remains an outsider throughout the book to some degree and despite her hanging out with these ‘normal’ teens, she never wavers on her opinions or actions. The author uses Violet's character in order to expose the true motives behind the feed and corporations as they take advantage of people and uses her fate to bear the real meaning of this novel, which is that they are all simply pawns in a game to the corporations in order to make money.

Throughout the novel, one key detail that is maintained is Violet’s care for the natural world and ecosystem. She seems to be the only person who worries about its state and how its disappearance will matter once it is truly gone. Everyone else in the book, both teenagers and even adults, is depicted as not caring about the environment because if it is gone they can easily come up with a new solution. “Yeah. Sure. Do you know how inefficient trees are next to an air factory?” (Anderson 125). This quote is from when Titus’ dad discusses with Violet the need for trees to be cut down as they take up real estate land. This purely shows how brainwashed these characters are as they are all blinded with the idea of using everything to make money instead of caring about the natural world. They do not realize the actual impact the crumbling of the environment would have on their lives, they are shown to believe that anything in nature is replaceable and they do not need it in order for their lives to run normally. This is a major part of the novel where Violet is labeled as an outsider and differs from everybody else, she expresses her concern for the environment and is aware of the impact it would have on everybody if it was destroyed. She is not afraid to debate the uncomfortable topics that the rest of the characters may find overwhelming to think about. “Not only must environmental education teach people about their physical environment, it must go further to teach how to live and flourish in sustainable ways. Environmental education has failed in part because of its limitations” (Saylan & Blumstein 2). This quote is from a book in which it is discussed that in today's day and age there are many people who are not aware of the environment’s issues and how much it truly matters. It can only be imagined that this statistic will get smaller and smaller as time goes on, which we can assume is what happened in this novel. This book is set in the future and a critical thing to note is that their feed tells them what they need to know, or at least what it deems important for them to know. This would show that obviously the corporations and the feed would not tell people about such issues as they do not want them focusing on things like this instead of helping them make money. This is one place where Violet becomes labeled as an outsider, she does not contain the ability to ignore these issues and go on with her life because they are constantly blaring in her head. Her constantly pushing this issue forces other characters to have these conversations with her and by result the audience starts to learn about how the corporations have attempted to avoid the feed users from knowing this information.

Another vital place in this book where Violet is labeled to be an outsider is when she does not understand or go along with the want for things that are trending. The audience can see this happen in multiple places throughout the book, whether that is through buying fancy new upcars, new trending clothes, or even getting surgery for lesions. Throughout almost the entire novel, it can be easily noticed that Violet does not conform to the society norms of following trends or even really understand them. Many times we see all of the other characters follow new trends almost exactly as soon as their feeds inform them about it. One example of this is when Calista and Loga buy and wear their riot gear to a party as soon as they see it start trending. They explain their need to have it because it started trending last week which shows how a majority of the characters in this book prioritize being popular and having popular things because they see it as something in their lives that they need to have. “Keeping up with trends can foster a sense of community and camaraderie among people who have the same interests or preferences. Essentially, we follow trends because we don’t want to be left out and because it’s easier than making our own path” (Price 1). This is from an article in which it is explained that most people follow trends because they want to be liked and supported by others around them and it makes them feel a sense of belonging and importance. This is a key factor that can be seen in this book among most of the teenagers as they all follow trends in order to stay popular among their friends and other peers. This is another part of the novel where Violet is seen to be an outsider and where she starts to become disliked as she voices her opinion. She is seen multiple times not understanding the feeling behind all of her ‘friends’ to want these things that are new and trending. She expresses how she does not want the feed to tell her what she likes and what should be important in her life so instead of going along with the feed and corporations like everybody else does, she decides she wants to mess with them. This leads to Violet taking Titus to the mall and messing with her feed by pretending she is interested in things and then not buying them which bothers the corporations as she is no longer being an asset to them making money. As a result of this, Violet starts to get body malfunctions as soon as she no longer is useful to these corporations. The author shows this to describe to the audience the underlying message in the book that the corporations are only interested in the people who help them produce profits and that they have no care for people who do not benefit them.

One final reason that the author uses in order to show how Violet is an outsider is her constant reminder to the other characters that they should be smarter and more aware. Throughout the novel the audience can see how Violet occasionally makes the other teenagers feel as though they are being stupid for just being themselves how they were taught to be. As she was raised differently than all of them she cannot see why they would want to like random popular things or why they would go along with these things purely because someone else told them to. This can be seen in the beginning of the book when the teenagers were all in the hospital on the moon without their feeds when Violet shows Titus that she knows some of the basic language. She essentially shows Titus this with what he believes to be an underlying message stating that she is smarter than him. This is shown later in the book when Violet says almost the same thing about Titus’ friends and he does not take too kindly to it. She expresses how she feels dumb when she is around them because all they do is party and do what she deems unimportant activities. This forms her as an outsider because it is the true factor that makes Titus and his friends start to not like her being around as it always seems that she is criticizing and judging them for simply enjoying and having fun in their teenage years. Ultimately, the author shows throughout the book how Violet is there to be an outsider in their world and belittle them for how their society functions.

Works Cited

Anderson, M.T. FEED. Somerville, Massachusetts, Candlewick Press, 2002.

Price, Austin. "The Psychology Behind Trends." google scholar, Regis University Highlander, ruhighlander.org/home/2024/6/20/the-psychology-behind-trends. Accessed 22 May 2026.

Saylan, Charles, and Daniel T. Blumstein. The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It). E-book ed., University of California Press, 2011. Google Scholar.

The Cost of Caring

“...with some recent studies estimating up to 90% of school psychologists experience occasional feelings of burnout in their working lives,” (Schilling and Randolph). When operating in the field of social work, you are constantly challenged everyday as you work through people’s feelings and fragile emotions while also attempting to protect your own. You must be listening intently and engaged as they share their stories with you, while you try and separate your personal life from theirs. Many professionals in this field, especially in their beginning years, tend to struggle with creating healthy limits on where to stop setting unreasonable goals for themselves that will push them too far. Working in this field can also induce pressure on a person as a lot of social workers take their client’s successes and failures as their own. They may feel that even though it is not their life or their decisions, they must have had some sort of influence into their client’s current situations which can cause a major disappointment in themselves. Both of these factors play a heavy weight in social work professionals experiencing physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion due to extreme stress from their job, otherwise known as job burnout.

Making sure that their clients are comfortable and are aware that they are in a safe space to speak their feelings aloud is not an easy task to complete, but it is one that every professional in this field has to complete. Occasionally, a professional may have to share a story of their own in order to make a client feel comfortable but this is where something can go wrong if not went about properly. If the social worker can not identify when to stop sharing and draw a professional boundary in their relationship, it can easily go too far and cause them to get caught in it. It is extremely important for them to recognize when their lines are getting blurred between professional life and personal life. They must then do something about it so that it does not become a problem leading them to experience burnout from being too involved with any one client. Someone who has experienced it firsthand and learned throughout her career how to work around the occasional fading of limits between a professional and a client is Dr. Kathryn Shoemaker. Dr. Shoemaker has an undergraduate degree in psychology, a masters degree in social work, and she recently got her doctorate in social work. She has spent years in the field navigating when and where to draw boundary lines and how to leave her work behind and not pick up on it until the next day or her next session with each client once she is done for the day. Dr. Shoemaker talked about how she likes to separate her personal and professional life as she navigates working from home. “I really just try to do any kind of work that I have or clinical notes in my office so that when I leave that space, I kind of leave my work there,” (Shoemaker). She emphasized how she tries her absolute best to focus and give her all to each client during their individual sessions. However, she then likes to stop thinking about it soon after the session is over in order to preserve her brain and not take herself on a roller coaster of worrying about each client to the point of exhaustion for herself.

As stated before, many social work professionals tend to get caught up at least once in their career in job burnout because of them not noticing or not being able to acknowledge the fact that they are blurring the professional boundaries that should be placed between them and their client. If and when a social worker starts to blur the lines of professionalism, their job would actually get harder for them. This is because as people grow closer together, they are more likely to feel more emotion from the other person, which in turn means more compassion and empathy being drained from them. This can be a good thing, however, it can also lead to an emotional burnout on the professional. If they are always feeling so much for their clients, it will drain them eventually leading them to experience job burnout and harming their health, both physical and mental. “A greater burden due to high psychosocial job demands went along with higher levels of mental strain, which in turn were associated with ill health,” (Mayeryl). This quote is from an article that discusses the different psychosocial effects that can result from working as a professional in the social work field. It displays how when these professionals are not careful about how they maintain taking care of themselves and not getting wrapped up in everybody else’s issue it can cause them major pain. Although some professionals may see it as a sign of weakness to set these boundaries and think that it means they are not dedicated enough, it means quite the opposite. If anything, it shows how truly dedicated they are to their work and passion that they want to stay healthy so they can continue to work in this field and continue to do their job of helping people while they also take healthy care of themselves. So instead of it being seen as a weakness, it should be seen as a strength of having the skill to want to maintain your passion.

Another reason that social workers can get trapped in experiencing job burnout is that they tend to begin blaming themselves when something does not go to plan in a client’s life. A big reason for this is that many social workers began working in their profession for the sole purpose of wanting to help their clients be heard and be of service to their clients when they need advice on a current situation going on in their life. Their compassion and genuineness is what draws them in to a client and what causes their profession to latch onto their personal life. This would be where these social work professionals need to recognize that no matter how hard they try and how much effort they put into a client, they will never be able to control the outcome of everything in their life. They should have an understanding that even though they are a support system for their client and are supposed to help them, they should never take any relapse or failure to meet a goal from a client as a personal reflection of themselves and their worth as a social work professional. These professionals should avoid setting super unrealistic and unsustainable heights for themselves and should start with lower expectations. If they set small goals for themselves that they can easily reach they will gain more confidence and can increase goals as they see fit. However, if they set their goals and ambitions far too high and can not meet some of their first goals it will lead them to eventually experience frustration and a sense of helplessness which will lead them to start experiencing emotional and mental exhaustion at work which will reduce their satisfaction, enjoyment, and passion for their job.

To sum this all up, job burnout is an extremely significant topic and it is something that all social work field professionals should be aware of and look out for throughout their careers. They should be careful to not cross boundaries with their clients and mess with the line between having a professional conversation about their troubles and speaking as a friend, which would allow for these professionals to take over the emotions of their client. It is also incredibly important that these professionals do not take any failure or lack of decision making from their client to mean that something is wrong with their professional opinion. They should never let it get to the point where what happens in their client’s lives is directly affecting what is happening in their personal life, that is when it has most definitely gone too far. Overall, job burnout is a scary reality that all social workers face when they give their clients their empathy and compassion and it is important that they all look out for their personal life security and make sure they value it correctly.

Works Cited

Shoemaker, Kathryn. Personal Interview. 5 October 2025

Schilling, Ethan J., and Mickey Randolph. “Voices from the Field: Addressing Job Burnout in School Psychology Training Programs.” Contemporary School Psychology, vol. 25, no. 4, 2021, pp. 572–81, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-020-00283-z.

Mayerl, Hannes et al. “The Role of Personal and Job Resources in the Relationship between Psychosocial Job Demands, Mental Strain, and Health Problems.” Frontiers in psychology vol. 7 1214. 17 Aug. 2016, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01214

Refreshing Turned Repulsive

In today’s modern society, it is extremely difficult to make people realize the invisible threats to their health that are inside so many foods and drinks that they consume. Through this advertisement, Get Healthy San Mateo County attempted to help people understand just exactly what they are putting inside their bodies and doing to their health. The advertisement shows a bottle of soda poured on top of twenty-two packets of sugar into a cup instead of the usual liquid, in order to display to the viewers what they are drinking. This image is paired next to a question which is placed to make the viewer of this advertisement think about their answer, “You wouldn’t eat 22 packs of sugar. Why are you drinking them?”. Towards the bottom of the ad, it displays a logo of the company putting this message out along with a link to find more information on this topic. Get Healthy San Mateo County uses this visual metaphor in order to invoke a sense of reality into their viewer, displaying how much sugar intake is happening when they drink just a twenty ounce bottle of soda. It uses specific numerical values to provide a sense of actuality and sense inside their message by telling the viewer that twenty-two sugar packets are inside the average twenty ounce bottle of soda. The advertisement also contains a link to information on this topic of health right below their message in the hopes that people will experience a wave of reality upon seeing the image, and head towards their link to get more information on this topic. The advertisement is able to make the reader see something they usually would not bat an eye at and turn it into something that makes them disgusted, forcing them to think about their actions more when making decisions concerning the drinks that they let themselves consume.

To begin, the part of this advertisement that has the most effect on the viewer is the physical image of the pouring of soda into a cup of dry sugar packets. By displaying the soda with twenty-two sugar packets instead of the usual liquid, the soda seems different and causes the viewer to think about what is actually in their drinks. It causes a discomfort between the audience and the drink because all of a sudden the number of grams of sugar becomes a reality, instead of just a number on the label. Since most people would be revolted by the idea of having to sit and eat twenty-two singular packets of plain sugar, comparing it to the soda makes it much less appealing to the viewer. Furthermore, the volume of the sugar in the cup displays how much is actually dissolved into the drink. It makes the cup feel cluttered and heavy instead of a normal, light and refreshing drink choice. The way that the sugar packets stand on top of each other and stay pressed against the edge of the cup as if they are trapped creates another sense of overwhelm in the audience. It makes them feel that there is so much, it is going overboard. When the viewers experience this feeling of being overwhelmed, they stop seeing a refreshing soda and start to see something gross that would be harmful to their health. The final feeling of disgust through this image is caused by the act of the soda being poured directly over the dry sugar packets. Since the packets are already almost reaching the brim of the cup, if the soda was poured on top of them it would become overflowed and would make a mess. This causes a sense of discomfort in the viewer. The soda being poured on top of the dry sugar packets also causes a sense of unpleasantness because it forces the audience to imagine the mixture it would make, soggy sugar packets stuck inside the cup. All of these aspects turn the idea of a refreshing drink of soda into a disgusting and heavy mixture that makes them feel uncomfortable to think about drinking.

In addition, another vital piece of this advertisement is that of the wording. Not only what it actually says but also how it was chosen to be displayed on the advertisement. To the left of the picture of the soda pouring into the cup of sugar packets is written “You wouldn’t eat 22 packs of sugar. Why are you drinking them?” in bolded, capitalized, red letters. These components are used to enter the mind of the viewer and become an authoritative voice inside their head. The bright red color on top of the plain white background stands out to the reader. It draws their attention to the words to ensure that the viewer reads it and takes in its information. The color also forces the viewer to feel a sense of intimidation and fear as red is usually a color associated with danger. If the audience feels this as they read the message it helps make them feel that this information is dangerous and important. Another aspect of the lettering that captures the reader's attention is the capitalization. In the advertisement the main message is written in all capital letters, which is usually associated with important messages. If the letters are bolded and capitalized in the face of the reader it makes them feel that it is something they should pay attention to, causing them to truly read the message and force themselves to understand the importance of the question. Another way they get inside the mind of the viewer is by personally addressing them in the advertisement. In the question asked, it specifically starts with “You wouldn’t eat…” which immediately confronts the reader and makes them think about their personal consumption habits. Doing this can make the reader feel ashamed or embarrassed of their habits, forcing them to feel a sense of internal conflict, creating a want to do more for their health. The final aspect of the wording on the advertisement that speaks to the reader is the fine print. In the phrased question it contains an asterisk leading the reader to see the small print underneath the main message. That small print states that the “22 packets of sugar” is the correct number when you are drinking a twenty ounce bottle of soda. Seeing this attaches a sense of reality of the advertisement to the reader because they are using actual proven numerical values. All of these components of the wording and style make the message stand out to the viewer so much more than if it were written simply, forcing their mind to make them truly understand it.

Finally, the last part of the advertisement is the link and logo at the bottom of the page directing the viewer towards the people that are sending out this message. It is intentionally placed directly below the message and image to lead the viewer towards the website. It is put there in hopes that after the advertisement has been looked at, the viewer wants to learn more and searches up their website to get more information. If the person looking at this advertisement decides to search up the Get Healthy San Mateo County link it will lead them to a place where they can learn more about not only sugary drinks but also other unhealthy habits as well. It can lead them to learn important information that helps make the unhealthiness of too much soda a reality, for example, “Countywide, nearly one in three children and one in six adults in San Mateo County drink one or more sodas each day” (Get Healthy San Mateo County). Seeing statistics like this from a professional company can also help set a tone of actuality in the viewer's mind to how serious soda consumption can be in a person's health. 

Overall, this advertisement from Get Healthy San Mateo County succeeded in their attempt to strip away the illusion of soda being a healthy and refreshing drink option. They used their detailed imagery, selective wording, and helpful informational contacts in order to help the audience of their advertisement truly understand the gravity of the issues that these drinks bring to a person's health. They take a refreshing looking soda and turn it around to make the viewer’s mind think it to be a gross and unhealthy option of drink choices. Through their connection of the soda to its amount of sugar, bold writing style to make the viewer think about their choices, and choice of aid with links to help them learn more, this company helps their viewers see the reality in front of them that is the unhealthiness of their everyday drinks.