Brief Chapter 9 Summary:
In chapter 9 of My Year of Meats, Jane finally decides to expose the beef industries. With the help of Dyann she is able to gain more information about the industries and what they are doing to its buyers. Dyann gives her articles she wrote about the pharmaceuticals in feedlots use in the past to help Jane get a better understanding. Jane then chose two families to observe. One family included a husband who owns a feedlot and the other family where the husband worked in a beef industry. In order to hide her actual intentions of observing the families, she sends her information to Ueno and hides their occupations and focuses on their family life.
While I was reading this part of the chapter I just kept thinking about the book, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Jane is on the hunt for exposing the beef industries just like Sinclair did. His purpose of The Jungle was to show the conditions of the meat industries. All the health violations that we read about in My Year of Meats reminded me of The Jungle. These stories were published to show to public what is going on "behind the scenes" of meat industries. I think it is really bold of Jane, and Upton Sinclair, to gather all this information and to share to the public.
I have read the book The Jungle too! I agree with you that it is brave of these authors to expose their beliefs in such a forward way. I think the history of the meat industry as told by Jane provides a timeline as to how the meat industry has become what it is today. The Jungle was a much more graphic approach to exposing the harsh reality of the meat industry whereas Jane exposes the meat industry from a more formal, journalistic approach.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the dramatization of both Sinclair's, "The Jungle" and Ozeki’s "My Year of Meats" highlights the blunt truth behind the meat industry. The consumption of meat and of each other is exemplified within both of these novels. The use of race, class, and gender are authentic to both novels even though they were written many years apart.
ReplyDeleteI also first thought of The Jungle when reading this novel and although like The Jungle, My Year of Meats focuses more of what is going into the meats rather then how the meats are slaughtered and the conditions they are in. throughout this chapter we see the effects of the unhealthy and unnatural substances that they put into the meat. I liked this view of the meat industry and getting to look at the hormones and antibiotics they feed the meat.At one point in this chapter Jane is with Sloan and he is hesitant to let her go to Colorado because of all the toxins and he doesn't want to run the risk of anything happening to her or their child.
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