Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine included a personal essay from novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, “Against Meat,” which recounts his struggles with whether or not to eat (or teach his child to eat) other creatures. As I started reading, I wondered what a wunderkind novelist might really add to the “Meat Is Murder” playlist.
The essay is well-written, and chronicles his family’s relationship to food in ways that many readers will recognize. Foer also uses the kinds of facts and figures that made a recent piece on hamburgers the most emailed Times story in the last 30 days.
Yet Foer’s argument seems to be moral rather than rational; it derives power from his personal struggle with his conscience. The story just happens to be newsy and timely because his conscience carries economic and political baggage.
Moral narratives have a checkered history in journalism. In light of persuasive editorials and essays that have favored injustices like segregation and eugenics, publishing stories that make moral appeals can be a tricky business.
But Foer electrifies a competent piece with a bravura finale that sneaks up on some very big questions while also providing a structural template for any aspiring essayist. He backs out of trying to convert others and instead narrates his own epiphany.
So, according to Foer, why not eat meat? Because in his heart, he believes it is wrong. That’s the summary, but if you want to see how an extended analogy can bring home a story like nobody’s business, read his piece through to the very end.
2 comments
Andrea, you seem to imply that moral argument is somehow suspect compared to rational, citing the “checkered history” of such argument in editorials and essays promoting injustices without citing other examples that argued for civil rights, racial justice, etc.
It seems to me that the appeal of narrative, of storytelling, plays on both the rational and emotional which includes moral. The impact on a reader of any story will be infused with her or his own experiences, biases, needs. Jonathan’s narrative is like the best of memoir, connecting the private with the public, the personal with something more universal. Choosing to continue eating meat may or may not be a moral decision for some but it is a decision worth considering.
Bob, I don’t think moral arguments are automatically suspect–just that sometimes very persuasive rhetoric can appeal to our emotions in ways that feel moral but ultimately may not be. So I think that news organizations should be thoughtful about using them. I actually liked this piece and agree with your point that successful narrative uses both the rational and the emotional. What surprised me most, though, was the appeal to the individual conscience (or at least JSF’s reliance on his own) at the end.
My sense is that you don’t see that kind of argument brought out in newspapers and magazines very often. One literature professor I exchanged emails with suggested the classic moral essay is nearly nonexistent these days–though he felt that “Against Meat” was a little too topical to qualify as one regardless.