Against Meat Or Not?
In the article “Against Meat” written by Jonathan Safran Foer, the author attempts to state why he becomes a vegetarian. Foer begins by telling an emotional story of his grandmother’s relationship to food. Then he presents his own muddled relationship with vegetarianism up through parenthood. Finally, he presents another story from his grandmother to persuade his audience to understand his thought process. Although Foer presents interesting stories, he has a distracting tone of confusion throughout the article, he uses mainly emotional appeal to make his argument, his statistical evidence is incomplete, and he commits the logical fallacy moral equivalence. Therefore, his argument is rendered unpersuasive.
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Foer draws the reader in with emotional stories of his grandmother, continues with his struggle to become vegetarian, and concludes with another story about his grandmother. He starts his article with his grandmother and he ends it with his grandmother. At the end, Foer is telling a story about how his grandmother was running away from the Germans because she was a Jew. His grandmother was so hungry one day and there was a person who gave her meat to eat and she did not eat it. Foer asks why. She replies, “It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork” (460). He asks, “What, because it wasn’t kosher?” She replies, “Of course.” Foer asks her, “But not even to save your life?” His grandmother responds, “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save” (461). He seems to appeal to the readers feelings of compassion for his grandmother’s story to get the audience to agree with him. Even though it is not his only mode of argumentation he relies primarily on his emotional appeals to make his point. Next, his statistical evidence was incomplete. For example, “Eating factory-farmed animals--which is to say virtually every piece of meat sold in supermarkets and prepared in restaurants--is almost certainly the single worst thing that humans can do to the environment” (457). Then he also says, “Free range,” “cage free,” “natural” and “organic” are nearly meaningless when it comes to animal welfare” (457). Thus, his statistical facts
A Rhetorical Analysis of “Against Meat” by Jonathan Safran Foer The standard way of thinking about vegetarianism has it that you either are one or you are not. While it is rarely discussed between omnivores and herbivores over dinner, vegetarians often fall into a category more accurately described as conscientious meat eaters. In Jonathan Safran Foer’s essay, “Against Meat,” he describes his personal plight to become, and remain, a vegetarian through-out his life.
We owe the animal respect.” Novella adored all her animals that she raises and even cuddles with them although knowing she will end up sadly killing it. She knew that this was part of life and it’s a process that she had to do in order to have ‘true connections’ with her food. When we grow respect and understanding for our foods we also learn to appreciate the value of what good produce go through to get to our plates. The power to modify our ideal food is at our
In other countries people do not hesitate to eat a dog or a horse however we do not eat those here because we have emotional connections to these animals. In India, for example, they eat their dogs but would never even dream of eating their cows; we are the exact opposite. Foer poses the question: if our neighbors do not own pets, would we even be able to be offended if they ate a dog for dinner? It really makes you think. Next, he asks us, why do we stray away from eating a severely impaired human, but not a pig with potentially more brain capacity than said human?
Let Them Eat Dog by Jonathan Safran Foer is an argumentative essay that gives some conflicting ideas about the ethics of eating meat. In the first place, people place the argument that dogs are the best friends of human beings, and so since these animals are wonderful, they are exceptional in several ways. They are naturally exceptional in their intellectual and experimental capabilities because they can do smarter things than other domestic animals. In this particular case, taboo restricting people to eat a dog’s meat has great things to conceal about dogs and humans.
In the Story “Let them eat dong: A Modest proposal for tossing Fido in the oven” Jonathan Safran Foer brings to light the idea of how some animals are seen as special and not eaten. Using dogs as the example in showing how a person wouldn’t dare to eat one, but are okay with eat a pig or any other living creature. Making the argument that all living animals have feeling and are special in their own ways, so none of them should be eaten but rather cherished like a dog is. Although the story is unbelievably well written and with great point on culture about food, equality of animals and the…, yet there is only emotional appeal and bias towards his idea of not eating meat.
“Food, Inc.” is a documentary about the production of food that many people do not know about. The purpose of the film was to bring awareness of the industrial food production hoping that viewers will make better choices when eating. It was an interesting film because it showed footages of farms, slaughterhouses and food packaging factories, things that some people might not be aware of because it is not usually covered in the news. Aristotle’s means of persuasion was used in this film to demonstrate the main points. Ethos was used throughout the film.
In the article, “Is It Possible to be a Conscientious Meat Eater”, the authors argue that processed meat can greatly affect the many things in our everyday life. Sunaura and Alexander’s argument is significantly unreliable because of the certain professions both authors yield. As stated in the article “Sunaura is an artist, writer, and activist in Oakland.” “Alexander’s profession is studying philosophy, and ethics in Athens, Georgia.” This shows that neither of them are qualified to argue in the subject of conscientious meat eaters.
There’s plenty of meat and stuff in the freezer, and you can have it right there and not even move out of the chair… I’d like to do it. We can have lamb chops. Or pork. Anything you want.” (Dahl 25-26).
Due to McWilliams’ strong claim, evidence, warrant, backing, and rebuttal to counter arguments, his argument is therefore an effective one, according to the Toulmin method. The most important and key components, that are vital to an argument, are the argument’s claim, qualifiers, as well as the evidence the author uses to support their argument. If there were no claim, then the author has no firm stance or basis for their argument, because they would have nothing to defend or persuade their readers of. The claim James E. McWilliams makes in the article “The Locavore movement: Why Buying from Nearby Farmers Won’t Save the Planet” is that since there are so many factors that are attributed to the destruction of the earth and the waste of tons of energy ,that the locavore movement is not quite saving the planet simply by focusing
In Jonathan Foer’s argumentative essay “Let Them Eat Dog”, he makes a very convincing argument for the consumption of dog, a surprising topic to argue for. However, when one reads through his excerpt, it’s quite difficult to escape the sound logic he utilizes throughout the piece. Ranging from commentary on the taste of dog meat to points about the ecological impact it would have if the U.S. started eating dog, Foer is persuasive and reasonable. So reasonable, in fact, that it begs the reader to question exactly why he would put so much effort into arguing for eating dog, something that most people won’t change their minds on no matter how logical the argument is. Foer even admits at the end of his essay that despite his best efforts, people
Although its author, Galloway, has had a trajectory of feminism and social justice, those facts aren’t really necessary to find out what’s “wrong” within the story, just by reading how the “meat” -presented as a sort of protagonist- is described the question “Is this human meat?” comes right to the perceptive reader’s mind. “The carcass hung… till the edges congested and turn brown… down the spinal column: familiar enough in its way.” (Galloway, lines 1,
Rhetorical Analysis “Down on the factory farm” The last thing that comes to our mind when we order a piece of steak at a restaurant is how that animal we are about to eat was being treated while they were alive. According to author Peter Singer’s article "Down on the factory farm” he questions what happened to your dinner when it was still an animal? He argues about the use and abuse of animals raised for our consumption. In Singer’s article he states personal facts and convincing statistics to raise a legitimate argument.
The story begins with a story that has taken place before. In the history, we meet Jonathan Sanfran Foer the author and another person, who is called the girl. Froer tells about his experience from that day he met this girl, which was crying on the phone. He wanted to help her, but he decides not to do it after all. After that, Froer starts to explain how this situation affected him as a human who wants to show solicitude toward other humans.
How to Beat the Meat: On Becoming a Vegetarian “We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.” Jonathan Safran Foer wrote these strikingly true words in his book entitled Eating Animals, and we must honestly face the reality that we have, in fact, become a tortured people. We move through life blindly, making unconscious decisions about everything, from whom we associate with, to what we eat.
The author acknowledges issues in the vegetarian plan such as the “significant uncertainties” that the study is subject to (Davis 7). This helped convince the reader of the author's credibility in that they acknowledge flaws and are not pretending the study was perfect. The author's introduction paragraph presents a picture of a vegetarian sitting at a table with their family facing accusatory questions, which with the diplomatic tone, makes the scene relatable to the reader who may have also faced family scrutiny. The author's tone is shown in the way they subtly hint at the parallel between vegetarians and other people, to create a feeling of relativeness. This feeling the author creates in the reader makes the reader more open to the facts presented in the article and thus making the argument for worldwide vegetarianism more