Fast Food Nation Study Guide

Short Summary (Synopsis)

This book is divided into two sections, “The American Way,” which interrogates the beginnings of the Fast Food Nation within the context of post-World War II America; and “Meat and Potatoes,” which examines the specific mechanizations of the fast-food industry, including the chemical flavoring of the food, the production of cattle and chickens, the working conditions of beef industry, the dangers of eating meat, and the global context of fast food as an American cultural export.

Fast Food Nation opens with discussion of Carl N. Karcher and the McDonalds brothers, examining their roles as pioneers of the fast-food industry in southern California. This discussion is followed by an examination of Ray Kroc and Walt Disney’s complicated relationship as well as each man’s rise to fame. This chapter also considers the intricate, profitable methods of advertising to children. Next, Schlosser visits Colorado Springs, CO and investigates the life and working conditions of the typical fast-food industry employee-- fast-food restaurants employ the highest rate of low-wage workers, have among the highest turnover rates, and pay minimum wage to a higher proportion of its employees than any other American industry.

The second section of the text begins with a discussion of the chemical components that make the food taste so good. Schlosser follows this with a discussion of the life of a typical rancher, considering the difficulties presented to the agriculture world in a new economy. Schlosser is perhaps most provocative when he critiques the meatpacking industry, which he tags as the most dangerous job in America. Moreover, the meat produced by slaughterhouses has become exponentially more hazardous since the centralization of the industry-- the way cattle are raised, slaughtered, and processed provides an ideal setting for E coli to spread. Additionally, working conditions continue to grow worse. In the final chapter, Schlosser considers how fast food has matured as an American cultural export following the Cold War-- the collapse of Soviet Communism has allowed the mass spread of American goods and services, especially fast food. As a result, the rest of the world is catching up with America’s rising obesity rates.

Biography of Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser was born in 1959 in Manhattan; though, he spent his childhood in Los Angeles. Schlosser studied American history at Princeton and British imperialist history at Oxford University. In 1985 he wrote the musical Americans, treating American imperialism. Fast Food Nation was Schlosser’s first book, released in 2001. He followed this successful exposé with Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market in 2003. Reefer Madness considers important elements of the American black market--marijuana, immigrant labor, and pornography. Today, Schlosser works as a correspondent for Atlantic Monthly.

Historical Information

This book covers American history and culture, post-World War II. This time was especially prosperous for many Americans, particularly white middle-class men who had fought in the war and were able to reap the benefits of the G.I. Bill and the booming economy. For many minorities, this time was far less promising, as the benefits of the 60's civil rights movement and integration were yet to occur and even then, slow to impact society as a whole. The specific period directly after WWII seemed especially prosperous because the world war had effectively ended the decade long Great Depression for the Americans. This post-war economic boom arguably lasted until 1973. Schlosser sees the Reagan administration as responsible for the reversal of many of the social gains made during earlier periods in the twentieth century, including the progress made in the meatpacking industry. For more on the shift from a Fordist economy to one of more flexible accumulation and the role of the Reagan administration in the American economic scene, see David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Conditions of Cultural Change (Blackwell, 1989).

Cultural historians consider the paradigm shift from modernity to postmodernity one of the greatest changes of this period (that is from the early twentieth century to the late twentieth century). While modernism embraced the meta-narrative, linear progress, ideas which could totalize and unify people, as well as absolute truths-- postmodernism, conversely, localized the meta-narrative and fragmented experience, which drove people to search for stability in an unstable world

Genre

Fast Food Nation is a work of non-fiction. It is important to note the differences between non-fiction writing such as Fast Food Nation and novels. A novel is a fictional narrative in which literary elements such as exposition, rising action, climax, denouement, and characterization are essential elements. Fast Food Nation is an account of true events and does not contain t Freeme literary eleGuide Booke However Book reader should be aware that there are fictive elements to many non-fiction works, because the author must re-create scenes and decide how he or she wants to frame the data.