The paid maid, Becky, coaches Isabel on how to protect herself and Ruth: do exactly what Madam says. She begins work in the Lockton home, which is huge and lavish, and she plants her seeds in the garden. Isabel initially refuses-she doesn’t care about the war, just about figuring out how to free and protect herself and Ruth. He asks Isabel to spy on the Locktons, who are Loyalists, and in exchange for information Bellingham might free Isabel and Ruth. Curzon explains that his master, Bellingham, is a Patriot-and the Patriots will free slaves. Immediately upon arriving in New York, Isabel meets an enslaved boy, Curzon.

Isabel will help in the kitchen, and since Ruth is “simple,” she’ll be “an amusement in the parlor.” Isabel is distraught: the Locktons live in New York, which means she and Ruth will have to leave behind the ghosts of their parents, Momma and Poppa, since ghosts can’t cross water. But she brings some seeds Momma saved, though she doesn’t know what they’ll become.Īt a tavern in Newport, a wealthy Loyalist couple, Master Lockton and Madam Lockton, purchase the girls. Being enslaved, Isabel can’t even bring Ruth’s rag doll-she doesn’t own it. Robert, takes the girls to Newport to sell them.

But since the will is missing, Isabel can’t prove she’s free. Miss Finch stipulated in her will that the girls would be freed upon her death. The extent to which these two novels fit within the theoretical framework of utopian/dystopian fiction illuminates their disparate approaches to the power struggles associated with the culture industry.Thirteen-year-old Isabel and her five-year-old sister, Ruth, are enslaved-but Isabel believes they’ll be free, since the girls’ owner, Miss Mary Finch, has just died. Prom functions as a utopian, revisionist fairy tale in which the consequences of rampant consumerism are combated through individual agency and sustained community involvement, whereas Feed acts as an apocalyptic dystopia in which any quest for agency is thwarted by the rampant consumerism connected to the rise of a transnational, info-age economy. However, these two novels explore postmodern consumer culture from different perspectives. In order to address power relationships, the two novels address the rise of a global electronic and print media system that collapses traditional notions of time and space and the excessive consumption associated with the culture such a system creates. Anderson's Feed show their adolescent protagonists' struggles with identity formation, consumerism, and the adult world. Author's abstract: Resourcefully and responsibly obtaining a sense of power is central to quality young adult literature.

Prom by laurie halse anderson