Eating Animals

by

Jonathan Safran Foer

A Bit of Background on FoerI. His Education

* Princeton philosophy major, but worked under the tutelage and encouragement of Joyce Carol Oates

II. His Novels* Everything Is Illuminated (2002)* Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)* Both novels work to make sense of monumental

tragedies and demonstrate an in-spite-of-it-all faith in love and humanity

III. His Style* Formally, a literary postmodernist (polyvocal texts; blending and

bending of genre; radical time shifts and juxtapositions)* Thematically, a Romantic, even a sentimentalist, with profound

examinations of love, loss, tragedy, and redemption* We see evidence of both in Eating Animals, especially the genre-

blending pastiche of memoir, narrative, glossary, recipe, etc. (some--many--have called this gimmicky, but…)

The Genesis of Eating Animals

I. An Old and New Family

*Tendencies which had lain dormant or atrophied were revivified by birth of son

and a reconsideration of “family”

II. The Burden of Knowledge

Purposes

I. NOT a “straightforward case for vegetarianism” (13)

II. A creative, non-linear approach to exposing the horrors and cultural consequences of factory farming, in terms of Three Costs:

1. To Animals (pain, suffering, loss of dignity)

2. To the Earth (cites factory farming as #1 contributor to global warming)

3. To Humans (pandemic flus; resistance to antibiotics; hurts farm laborers and neighbors; demeans all

of us)

Proposals

I. An Ethical Collective

* bring vegetarians, vegans and ethical carnivores together, because our differences are minor

compared to those which separate us from factory farms (221)

II. Rebuild Rural Infrastructure

* traditional infrastructures which once supported poultry farmers have been almost entirely decimated (236)

III. Exercise Compassion/“Farm by Proxy” (258)

Picking on Pollan

I. Table Fellowship (55)

II. Myth of Animal Consent (99)

III. Joel Salatin’s Bird Farm (113)

IV. Refusal to fully address slaughter = “fundamental failure” & “insipid” (228)

V. Pollan’s claim that vegetarians are disconnected “dreamers” =

disconnected (255)

Criticisms of Foer

I. Gimmicks and Glibness (e.g. the case for eating dogs)

II. Equivocation

III. Foer’s “We” and “Us” (and who gets left out)

IV. Where is Peter Singer and Animal Liberation?

Tones of Home

I. The Pew Commission findings (87)

*industry threatens to withhold funds for university research

II. The “Feed the Hungry/Feed the World” Rhetoric of the Meat Industry (95/209)

*Gary Smith’s script?

III. Nicolette Niman’s Targeting of “Animal Science” departments as culprits in ushering in demise of traditional animal husbandry (206)

A Foer Effect?

I. Natalie Portman Goes Vegan

II. Fox (!) airs an episode of a crime procedural which features the death of an industrial chicken factory owner and real images of de-beaking

III. Daytime TV’s Ellen provides Foer a forum to mount the critique of factory farming with virtually no push-back