Significance of Food

Food plays a pivotal role in the plot of the novel. Everything that happens in the novel revolves somehow around food. The law to have more than two children is implemented because of a famine and drought that threatens the country. The Population Police and the government control the food supply, which also means that they control the people through the distribution or withholding of food. Food is one of the first things the people go looking for at the Population Police Headquarters when the government is overthrown.