Essay On Fast Food Nation

In the “the Jungle” the author Upton Sinclair uses ethos,pathos and imagery to expose the meat packing industry of its disgusting ways to the public’s eye. The first pathos the rhetorical device responsible for getting people into their feeling more than in their thoughtful minds. For example Mr. Sinclair takes full advantage of this when explains the meat packing plant products are not what you think they are. In this quote “there would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.”

Being confronted with the reality of a desensitised society advances one’s self to a heightened awareness of that reality. ‘The Meatworks’ exhibits this idea through the disregard for non-human life as seen when directly exploiting pigs to earn a living. The enjambment Gray employs within “But I settled for one of the lowest paid jobs, making mince, the furthest end from those bellowing, sloppy yards. Outside the pigs fear”. Along with first person and high modality expresses how both physically and mentally uncomfortable the persona is with being more involved with the slaughter, revealing his standpoint as a humanist, empathising with the pigs. Gray delves further into this empathy, directly describing the result of desensitisation in “arm-thick corkscrews, grinding around inside it, meat or not… using a

Schlosser describes the environment of the meat packing plants serving fast food companies in a startling straightforward narrative of his visit through a meat packing plant. He describes a brutal, and sometimes unsanitary environment. The rights of animals are a very broad and complex subject, but Schlosser touches on this as he describes the slaughterhouse floor. He describes animals in various states of disembowelment. Sometimes the animals were dead or stunned; sometimes they were thrashing about wildly in the last throws of death. The slaughter room floor was described as being covered with blood and feces. Employees worked at a furious pace to meet the day's quota. What bothered me most was the fact that this meat is not only prepared for fast food companies but also contracted out to serve our children's schools.

With the growth of cities and factories, citizens began to see unsafe and filthy conditions that progressives tackled to change. Muckrakers, journalists who exposed both government and corporations for their corruption, caused the most waves in change regarding consumer protection. Although at times the pieces by muckrakers were exaggerated, they were able to generate public awareness on issues that would have otherwise been swept under the carpet. One of the most notable pieces was “The Jungle, “by Upton Sinclair. Although he had originally wanted to expose the harsh conditions faced by immigrants throughout industrialized parts of America, he inadvertently exposed the meat industry for their unsanitary practices. Upton Sinclair made the public very aware of what is actually in their meat.

It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of mean and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go in the hoppers together.”# There was nothing the packers would not do to make a profit, if meat went bad they would pickle it or make sausage out of it, “there was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white-it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption.”# The Packers took no responsibilities for the sickness that these meats caused. It was not uncommon for people to die from sickness they had gotten from eating bad meat, this is also an issue in “The Jungle” when a young family member suddenly dies one morning, “it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning-which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned unfit for export.”# Disease was also a factor for the workers, as quoted from the book “Meat and Men “Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world.”# It was also not uncommon for people to fall into the vats and become lard. “The public revolted at the

set of terrifying and inhumanity acts take place on immigrants in the meat packing industry where many of them even lost their lives. They encounter extremes in freeze weather, heat exhaustion, overwhelming, and infectious disease. Upon Sinclair’s novel, where he depicts the scenery in the meat industries, "They don't waste anything. They use everything about the hog except the squeal." Yet most of them are grateful for getting a job because otherwise they would be in debt, starve and die. The author purpose of this book is to raise public awareness, soon after, The Food and Drug Act immediately takes a step on investigating animals slaughtering and working environment. Soon afterward, workers no longer work closed to the diseased animals and

Humans are the equivalent to animals in the meat industry for the purpose of profit. Jurgis tours the slaughterhouse. He describes the detachment in the work environment with the slaughtering and packaging of hogs. The hogs are not treated kindly or even thought of as animals just as sales. “There was a long line of hogs," being simultaneously "swung up and then another, and another squealing] and lifeblood ebbing away together.” (Sinclair 39) There is an orderly way to set up the slaughterhouse to distract the poor immigrants of the American lifestyle. The worker wants to give more to their family and add to their financial status even if it means being away from their home country. Businesses take advantage of workers valuing their work ethic more than the idea of being miserable at work so it is done continuously with no remorse. This social construct was built and implied because no one could protest against a life that helps them survive in the America 's capitalism. People and animals are

. A. Upton Sinclair wrote, “The Jungle”, to expose the appalling working conditions in the meatpacking industry.

The workers that operated on the kill floor were to shovel the guts and fetuses down the hole in the floor. The workers under the kill floor would take the fetuses and use them for more meat. The meatpackers still process carcasses from cattle that died from sickness or injury. These cattle weren’t supposed to be processed and sold because these carcasses so the companies didn’t lose money off of those cattle (Sinclair, 1906). Canneries used many tricks to pass the spoiled meat into “edible” product. If a worker were to fall into one of the vats of chemicals and no one noticed their bodies could be processed with the meat as if it was cattle carcasses to make fertilizer or

Fast food restaurants exude bright colors, distribute meals with toys, and create a sense of happiness, but what truly goes on behind the scenes of this magical industry? In Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the authors use similar rhetorical strategies to reveal the motives and unconventional practices of the food industry. Schlosser conveys his purpose through the utilization of pathos, ethos, anecdotes and imagery as compared to Sinclair who uses historical references and figurative language as well as imagery and pathos.

While I did not aim to create a slightly disturbing story, my sources guided the narrative. Dominic A. Pacyga’s Slaughterhouse: Chicago's Union Stock Yard and the World It Made influenced the unpleasant descriptions of slaughtering practices. His book details poor conditions in the slaughterhouses to highlight sanitation concerns as well as labor issues. The Jungle, while highly fictional, allowed me to see how the public viewed the stockyards in 1906 and why they pushed for higher regulation. Any additional sources provided context for the meat industry and enhanced the information that came from Pacyga and Sinclair.

Knowing what is in your fast food might make you think twice the next time you devour it. As the rise of the fast food nation in America has increased to an all-time high, so has the weight and waists of Americans all around the country. Not only has the United States grown to love the acquired taste of greasy golden fries and juicy burgers, it has also grown ignorant to the way their food is prepared. In the novel, “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal”(2002), by Eric Schlosser, he makes compelling points in his position against the fast food industry.

The contents inside the paradigmatic meatpacking factory is so inhumane and barbaric that no designation, appellation, or locution juxtaposes with the conditions and experiences that meatpackers are put through on a daily basis. Foremost the first safety hazard on the long list of employment safety deficiencies is worker proximity. Workers wielding butcher knives and hooks are literally feet from each other meanwhile 450 pound bloody pieces of beef are also being flung directly at meatpackers via trolley swing. The kill floor as its name insinuates is where hundred of steers sadly go belly up in the most gruesome way. About every ten second a worker transfixes a cow in a main channel of blood to give them a “merciful” death. There is also a

In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.

Section 2: Eric Schlosser argues that the slaughterhouses and meatpacking industries are unsafe, unhygienic and employees are treated falsely. The industry has made and will not make any effort to change its environment and habits. The companies are afraid to make changes to the industry because slowing the pace to protect workers can lead to a competitive disadvantage. Meatpacking is now the most dangerous job in the United States and the industry consists mostly of illegal immigrants and unskilled workers such as teenagers. The conditions are unsafe and unsanitary and they are rarely paid attention to.