Hi, folks. For Friday please read Jonathan Safran Foer's article, "Against Meat".
This post was supposed to go up on Tuesday and did not, so if you are unable to read it in time, or to do anything other than skim, I understand. We'll work with it primarily next Tuesday.
Anna
Overall, I really loved the message of Jonathan Foer’s article. It was interesting how Foer always had an internal conflict with “hurting animals” by eating meat and his natural carnivorous desires. I liked how he explained that he and his wife weren’t perfect when it came to sticking to a vegetarian diet, stating that they were “only human”. I think for people who also have had this dilemma can feel more comfort in the fact that it takes much discipline to give up something you love to eat and have numerous memories of. Furthermore, I appreciated the discussion of his grandmother’s dilemma with food on account of her experience during World War II. It explained why she cherished people eating wholeheartedly in the family, since she at the lowest points had to savagely consume for survival.
ReplyDeleteGabrielle Glashen
Not only did I like this article because I'm a passionate pescatarian, I also liked it because it was written by Jonathan Safran Foer… 'nough said. His writing style in "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" (one of his most popular novels) and this article are both relatable and humorous to the point where you want to keep reading. Other than his occasional remarks that remind me of my own grandmother, I really liked how Foer was able to talk about the different stages of his life; from his attentiveness to his grandmother’s perception of food, to his influential babysitter, to his constantly changing and somewhat impulsive food choices in college, to the commitment he made to his wife and two kids to eat better.
ReplyDeleteI also thought the section where he talked about the huge impact factory farms are having on the environment was really interesting. I had no idea that they were the number 1 contributor to global warming and one of the top 2 or 3 reasons for air and water pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, etc. I feel like if more people knew these stats they would be much more inclined to do something… or just become vegetarian and hope that others will do the same!
In the article, the author has talked about his story of being vegetarian and his love for food. When the author was young, he used to visit his grandmother’s house where he learned a lot about different types of foods especially vegetables. His Grandmother was obsessed with food, but with vegetarian food; not meat. She believed that she was the greatest chef who ever lived. The author learned many new things about food from her grandmother. From earn childhood he learned not to hurt animals and that food gives a person feeling of terror, dignity, gratitude, joy, religion, history and love.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when the author graduated he started eating meat and his habits were shaped again. Even his marriage had huge connections with food especially vegetarianism. The history of the author’s wife was surprisingly similar to his. When the son of the author was born, he also had similar interests and characteristics as his parents had. The food he ate was digested with the stories they tell. So the author and his wife decided to bring up their children as a vegetarian. Food farms are one of the worst things that humans are doing to the environment. For this reason and many others, the author is against meat.
This article by Foer was a real eye opener. Never before have I thought about corporate farm production being a cause for global warming, deforestation, or water pollution. This makes me think that instead of promoting carpools and bicycles, one should promote different eating habits. However Foer is able to use food to describe different parts of his life, whether it was as a child experience his grandmothers innovative cooking or as a parent restricting his children’s’ diets to vegetarian, in order to explain the meaning behind his thinking. Foer’s article also made me realize how much you can tell about a person by what and how they acquire the food they eat. For instance, when hearing about his grandmother’s hardship during the war I found it inspiring. Even when she was given a piece of pork and struggling with starvation she would not eat it because it would contradict her beliefs. If more people were able to take a stance such as this one the world would be a better place. In regards to eating meat, I feel turning toward vegetarianism would be an ideal solution in order to stray away from harmful and inhumane corporate farming. However, I also feel that an ideal solution is hunting. Being from a western part of Pennsylvania hunting is considered religion. Hunting is a way of life where even the first day of deer season is factored into work and school schedules. To those that say hunting itself is inhumane I am here to let you know it is far from the inhumane atrocities that occur behind corporate walls. When hunting I look to take down the elder of the bunch, or if there is an injured animal that is always the first choice. Any real hunter waits for the game to fully mature and live its life before even considering putting the animal down. In addition, hunters harvest the animals their selves creating steaks, jerky, turkey, etc. All this harvesting is done without corporate pollution. Because the entire process is kept local there is no contribution to global warming other than the truck one was driving in. Many will still argue that hunting is a horrible process, but when hunting was the only way to acquire ones food way back when, global warming and deforestation were not even close to being a concern.
ReplyDeleteSamantha Zuckerman
ReplyDelete“Against Meat” review
I thought this Times piece by Jonathan Safran Foer was extremely good. Foer was able to write a research memoir without filling it with a lot of dense information about his food research topics. I liked how he made his research portions about factory farming animals and global warming informal, without stripping them of their importance. Foer was also able to incorporate a few (about six if I counted correctly) examples in his personal life about food and tie them all together. I don’t believe I have ever read a research memoir that was executed as well as Foer executed his. It was interesting to read about how Foer’s perspective evolved through the different stages of his life—and quite comical how his babysitter’s one comment influenced the way he viewed meat for the rest of his life. Foer was able to make his article very relatable from every stage of his life. We’ve all gone through experiences like Foer’s with food. The times when you’re a kid and your relatives told you to eat something that you didn’t want to, or those times when you learn the truth about a type of food and it traumatizes you (I remember I had that experience when I ate escargot and was told after that they were snails). His college experience is very relatable and hits more close to home since we’re in a college writing class. Although I haven’t faced the same struggle with meat, I’ve seen and spoke to a bunch of friends going through the same dilemma as Foer did. Foer succeeded in writing a great food research-memoir.
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ReplyDeleteI found this article interesting, however I did not agree with some of the points made. To be more specific I do not agree with the overall tone of the article. It seems to me that the article is passing judgment on those that prefer a different eating style. Foer details his eating history which is influenced largely by his grandmother. Foer gives his background in the beginning almost disjointedly but then fully explains it, and how it affects his eating habits today. In the article he states that he finds eating animals “unnecessary,” especially in today’s modern world where the nutrients needed can be gotten from other sources than animal flesh. He decides to raise his family vegetarian because of all of the humane issues concerning the treatment of farm raised animals. All of these reasons are completely acceptable (who am I to judge?) but he also states that his children will be able to decide for themselves. This idea sticks out to me, not on a food level, but more of a behavioral level – one I will refrain from getting into. Foer concludes with the idea that though he may not be following his ethnic and religious traditions by not eating meat, he is still connected with his ancestors, specifically his grandmother, because of the stories they shared while around the dinner table.
ReplyDeleteZack Mejias
ReplyDelete“Against Meat”
I thought that this article written by piece by Jonathan Safran Foer was very good. My favorite part of the article was how in the beginning half it described his grandmothers eating and spending habits. My grandmother has a similar mentality when it comes to food, and I think that this made the article relatable to me. I think that many peoples grandparents in this generation have similar ideals when concerning food, and this made the piece interesting.
One of my favorite lines from the article was "Mark Twain said that quitting smoking is among the easiest things you can do; he did it all the time. I would add vegetarianism to the list of easy things. In high school I became vegetarian more times than I can now remember (...)"
This article was interesting for a variety of reasons, as it combined a lot of different techniques we have read about through this class. It was primarily a memoir, but it incorporated lots of research and did have a specific purpose besides just telling a story. He used memoir, exploration, and argumentation to illustrate his purpose, which was explaining his journey through vegetarianism and his subsequent reasoning behind his choices. The story he told about his upbringing and his current life helped explain why he is a vegetarian, and also why he chose to raise his kids as vegetarians. I also thought it was interesting how his grandmother’s views of food coincided with his own; his grandmother’s refusal to eat non-kosher foods was similar to his decision to avoid meat. His vegetarianism transformed from something he cared about sparingly to an important part of his life, and his use of different writing styles reflects this and helps show his purpose.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this article, however I think the author wanted to talk about too many things, in little space, but at the end everything came together well. What I enjoyed most about this article is the author’s perception of vegetarianism. While he did belief in the principles behind vegetarianism, he would go on and off from eating meat, to becoming a full vegetarian, and his wife was also doing the same thing. I guess I thought that was weird because we are usually used to black and white, especially with those kinds of subjects, because we are used that vegetarians have very strong, and aggressive beliefs behind their vegetarianism, but reading that the author was on and off on vegetarianism, kind of like in a grey are, sounded a little odd to me.
ReplyDeleteAlthough his story is interesting, I also believe Foer wrote about many things--the value of food, the discipline of a vegetarian, his love for meat, etc. I just felt like it was a lot for this little piece. I do agree that his story was interesting. I've always wondered how vegetarians remained vegetarians. I understand that it is a question of discipline, but I think it is more to it than that. It means altering an aspect of your life. And Foer explains this perfectly. Comparing himself with Dickens, he believes he can easily quit eating meat. But, his family's love for food is instilled in him, which makes it difficult for him to do so. I also think it is important to recognize that we are only human and he emphasizes that. This made his article more relatable.
ReplyDeleteThe whole vegetarian/ not conflict is familiar--I tried being vegetarian for a year before coming to college. Toward the end I became a pretty bad vegetarian like them. So that part of it, and the moral compromise I understand. It didn't quite serve to make me want to try it again (I've learned to love meat, and I don't really feel like it's a full meal without it).
ReplyDeleteHowever, this seemed to have a bit of Lim in it, with the ending quotation:
“The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.”
“He saved your life.”
“I didn’t eat it.”
“You didn’t eat it?”
“It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“What, because it wasn’t kosher?”
“Of course.”
“But not even to save your life?”
“If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”
That story was incredibly powerful and it left me sorta like "wow!" I had the little question nagging me at the end: "how does this relate to the beginning where he's talking about the question of eating meat or not". Here it felt like he was broaching on a topic that was far larger than the essay. But that was still a great and powerful ending, and I'm glad he chose to put that in.
I think the article was very well written article with a powerful message. Foer talks about food in many different aspects, symbol of his grandmothers love and also in an environmental way where animal food production plays a huge role in global warming. He also mentioned a worldly human dilemma that affect the Western people. It is really uncommon to find vegetarians from my part of the world. It is not a trend as the mentality is the animals are here for us to eat. It is a culture that depends on a meat diet since most nomads engage in herding and farming as their primary food source. II don't really know much about the treatment of animals but I do know that religion plays a role in what foods are allowed and how animals must be treated before they are eaten so mistreatment of animals or killing them in the wrong way causes huge problems. Overall, I think the things he mentioned and talked about were very interesting specifically when he talks about his struggle with becoming a vegetarian and how he wants to raise his children in that way but also knows its unfair that they would not enjoy the same joy he did when he ate meat. Even by planting these values in his kids he doesn't mind if they end up eating meat as he will be happy if they find their own values and follow them. The human accept where he would be a vegetarian one day and not the other made the article relatable as it takes more than discipline, it takes sacrifice.
ReplyDeleteTara Saleh
ReplyDeleteIn “Against Meat”, Jonathan Foer was capable of discussing vegetarianism and beliefs regarding the food we eat from a personal perspective. I think that made the article more appealing and interesting to me. The way he started his article talking about his grandma, the chicken with carrot she always cooked and her beliefs regarding how a person should eat. After that he conferred the first time he was introduced to vegetarianism by his babysitter, his on-off experience being a vegetarian, and how his wife shared his same beliefs. The most inspiring quote in the text was when he said, “I wont measure my success as a parent by whether my children share my values, but by whether the act according to their own.”
Towards the end, Foer connected the whole article by referring back to a story of his grandma during the war, and how she was starving but wouldn’t eat a piece of pork. I think by this, he conveyed his true purpose behind his article that everyone has a set of certain beliefs that they follow. That was clear in the grandma’s story because in the beginning of the article Foer explains how she believes that a person should eat everything, however towards the end he shows us that even if his grandma didn’t share his beliefs about vegetarianism she had her own beliefs about not eating pork.
Jamieson Tymann
ReplyDeleteJonathan Safran Foer, notably a well established writer with his New York Times best selling book "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" only goes on to prove his mastery of writing in this article. His effortless integration of memoir into his food writing not only tells a story, but explains the justification for his ultimate decision to raise his children as vegetarian. What is uniquely special about this article is that he flirts so often with both sides of his own internal struggle that there seems to be absolutely no argumentation style to be found. The rarity is that while there is a dichotomy of choices, he advocates for neither, while taking the reader on an exploration of his own decision to pick a side. At many times, in fact, his story telling and reminiscence of the wonderful times at his grandmothers would have you believe that he finally renounced his vegetarianism (at least if you hadn't seen the title, that is). Ultimately, the article is stuffed with interesting points to mull over as we contemplate both his family dynamics and the origins of his meatless journey.