From Two Different Worlds

For our society today, our economic class controls more of our lives than we really know. Every person out there play a different role in our society and  our place in it really matters. After reading both Feed by M.T. Anderson and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, it is easy to see how much one’s socio-economic class can effect their role throughout separate societies and the effect their governments over them.

Feed by M.T. Anderson follows the lives of a group of teens about 100 years in the future. In their society, (almost) everyone has the internet implanted into their head through a chip called the feed. For them, almost everything in the world it right in their grasp. On the other hand, Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins follows a teenage hero Katniss Everdeen as she continues to fight to protect herself and the one’s she loves after winning the 74th Hunger Games. For her, everyday is an everlasting struggle of survival, even with riches and fame.

In comparison, Titus and Katniss live two completely different lives. In Feed, Titus lives a rather privileged life. He can come and go as he pleases and gets whatever he wants without have to even work that hard. For instance, Titus is spoiled and pampered by his parents for doing almost nothing.  After feeling down on himself one day, the text reads, “We’ve decided you need a little cheering up,” said my mother. I started to feel a little better. I could feel their feed shifting toward a common point, some kind of banner they were pulling up. “We’ve decided to get up your own upcar,” said my mother. “You can pick it,” said my dad. “Within certain limits” (Anderson 118). Titus is privileged in a way that Katniss is, even after winning the Hunger Games.

For Katniss, absolutely nothing has come easy for her. She was ripped of her youth and forced to kill for the amusement of others. The text reads, “ Not only are we in the districts forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol’s power each year, we are forced to celebrate it. And this year, I am one of the stars of the show. I will have to travel from district to district, to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me, to look down into the faces of the families whose children I have killed…” (Collins 4).  Katniss’ life is more like hell than reality and she doesn’t have anything close to the same freedom as Titus.

If you look at Titus and Katniss in correlation of where they come from, parallels can be drawn from their different socio-economic classes. Titus and his friends are seen to be upper middle class. They can afford nice trip and can keep up with the latest trends. They are almost like the people in the Capitol of Panem. Much like the people of the Capitol, body modification played a role in Feed. The scene when Quendy gets her new lesions, the text reads, “I was all going pretty good until Quendy arrived. When she got there, it was like —silence… wwwwwwwwww (wind)... wwwwwwww… ping (pin dropping) — because her whole skin was cut up with these artificial lesions. We were all just looking at her. They were all over her. She raised her arms. The cuts were like eyes. They got bigger and redder when she moved” (Anderson 191). It is almost exactly similar to the behavior of the people in the Capitol. At one point while getting a makeover from her team, she thinks, “Do what? Blow my lips up like President Snow’s. Tattoo my breasts? Dye my skin magenta and implant gems in it? Cut decorative patterns in my face?  Give me curved talons? Or cat whiskers? I saw all these things and more on the people in the Capitol. Do they really have no idea how freakish they look to the rest of us?” (Collins 49). Even though they are from two different worlds, Titus and his friends  could very easily fit into Katniss’ just based on the environment they were raised in.

It is safe to say that both Titus and Katniss are products of their environment. Maybe things would be different if the table were turned.

Brittany H. (Text-to-Text)

Work Cited

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2002. Print.

Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. New York: Scholastic Inc, 2009. Print.