Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

The Feed and Corporations

An antagonist is someone who gets in the way of the protagonist's plot, and if we think of Titus's plot as "learning to grow up and get a clue," there's not really a specific character in the text who does that.

The real antagonist seems to be the feed, and by extension the corporations who control it. That's why the novel gives us those brief but tantalizing (although pretty horrifying) glimpses into what's happening around the world: riots, toxic waste destroying whole villages, and deformed animals. The feed is what keeps Titus practically brain-dead and placated, and the corporations get in the way of his budding relationship with Violent. 

If you weren't already convinced that the corporations were the Big Bad, Violet gets sick and FeedTech, the company that installed Violet's feedware, refuses to fix her equipment. She goes brain dead (for real), and the corporations just laugh all the way to the bank.