This essay is about Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. The terrifying yet funny contents of this book entails about the fast food industry where Eric Schlosser visits the laboratory where fast foods were being made. This book also entails about the explanation where the meats on your burger really comes from and how those fries smell very enticing and tastes so good. This essay will also compare and contrast Schlosser's Fast Food Nation with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The paper will not just provide lists of common and uncommon things between these two books, but the research will go deeper into the discussion of both aspects. This paper will be written in a manner of discussing Schlosser's book and its quotable lines along with picking up the lines from Sinclair's The Jungle, to portray the comparison between the two. Conclusion part of this paper will emphasize the essence of their writings to prove what they were trying to imply, which may also aims to reveal the reality behind our favorite foods. These books, as being studied through this essay will also prove the reality to serve as an eye opener to people who are fast food fanatics.
Meatpacking areas with private stockyards and slaughterhouse can be found in huge vendors. Refrigerated beef were shipped all round the United States from the major meatpacking companies located in Chicago. Upton Sinclair cited that Chicago’s Packing town is considered to be “the finest gathering of capital and work ever collected in one place” (Sinclair 294). In ancient Chicago slaughterhouses, cattle were smacked on the head, slaughtered, disassembled by experienced laborers and loaded in rails as components of beef, canned beef, or packed sausage.
Meatpacking plants' working situations were tough. Serious back and shoulder injuries, lacerations, amputations, exposure to harmful chemicals, and workplace accidents were identified in The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair. Sinclair mentioned in The Jungle (1906) that people had been made “cogs in the great packing machine,” (86) which are being replaced quickly and totally disposable. Federal investigators validated the Jungle, where Chicago's meatpacking laborers are working “under conditions that are entirely unnecessary and unpardonable, and which are a continuous risk not only to their personal health, but to the overall health of those who use the food merchandise prepared by them” (Sinclair 90). It directed Congress to create food safety laws in 1906. A lot of Chicago's meatpacking laborers had obtained union and their wages increased. And yet, meatpacking was nevertheless a dangerous job.
Eric Schlosser’s manifestation of the meatpacking and food processing industry is comparable to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906. The Jungle clearly describes the socio-economic problems and political issues that America encountered in the 20th century. It critically reveals meat packing sector in America in the early 1900's. Laborers experienced horrendous situations; they are given nominal wages, inflexible and extended hours, environment where laborer's safety had no certainty. It also refers to socio-political environment of America and the inappropriate behavior of business greed (Schlosser 94).
A large number of people in America went home each day broken and starving only to pay taxes to a government incapable to compete with huge businesses. They were used for the main reason to generate tremendous profits with no care for their suffering, considerably “like the hogs that are squealing and being thrown down the conveyor belts” (Sinclair 38). The voices of employees were not often listened to in the challenge towards socialism. Not because they are predetermined with the methods how things were handled or how they were cared for, but mainly because they constantly lived in fear of losing their employment. It took the concepts and intelligence of Sinclair to make the laborers comments heard, so individuals would no longer have to fear about harmful jobs and tainted meals.
In retrospect, Fast Food Nation and The Jungle were considerably about the human spirit as they were capturing social and political feedback and cautionary story. Schlosser and Sinclair were among several journalist to reveal the wrongs of meatpacking and food processing and recommend methods to resolve it. Their interpretation of the dreadful sanitary situations of meat packing and food processing plants are almost similar. They wished to give the public a perspective from the inside. Information pertaining to the unsanitary and dreadful conditions in meat packing industries and food processing appear to be background information of a considerably larger picture.
Between the two books The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, Schlosser does a better job at accomplishing his objective in convincing the community to change their point of view on the fast food industry, and motivating them to think about modifying the present conditions of the industry by taking action. Sinclair's primary objective of The Jungle is to encourage socialism and persuade the community to change drastically and become socialists; he does not successfully accomplish his objective, however. Furthermore, Fast Food Nation is much more attractive to the reader's feeling of ethos, pathos, and logos so it can achieve its goal; on the other hand, The Jungle is not as efficient.
Works Cited
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World. London: Penguin, 2002. Print.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle: With the Author's 1946 Introduction. Cambridge, Mass: R. Bentley, 1979. Print.
