Fast Food Nation Rhetorical Analysis

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Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, used techniques of persuasion through ethos, pathos, and logos and they help him become credible when it comes to uncovering the dark sides of the fast food industry. Schlosser’s audience are the people who eat at fast food establishments and who buy their products without knowing what it takes to serve it. By analyzing the book we can see how the author’s use of rhetoric analysis supports his argument. It not only benefited his purpose, but it also helped the reader understand it and take a stance on his argument.
Pathos is an appeal to emotion and is a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. Pathos is present towards the end of chapter 6 of Fast Food Nation
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Ethos in Fast Food Nation is clearly indicated in chapter 3 when we meet Elisa Zamot who works for McDonald’s. Schlosser explains what her daily routine is: long hours and a low wage. Elisa is an example of many teens that are preferred by fast food restaurants because they are easily replaceable and less expensive to hire. He continues to back up his claims by citing that, “About two-thirds of the nation’s fast food workers are under the age of twenty” (P68). His purpose is to expose the side of how young workers are being underpaid for their long work hours. Schlosser mentioning Elisa’s conditions and experiences, that resonate with similar people, helps in improving credibility. It is also clear that Schlosser is credible by doing first hand research with a direct …show more content…
It’s not the children that purchase soda it’s the parents, however child consumption is always the end result. He cites a 1999 study called ‘Liquid Candy’ by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The study says, “In 1978, the typical teenage boy in the US drank about seven ounces of soda; today he drinks nearly three times that amount, deriving 9 percent of his daily caloric intake from soft drinks” (P54). Using this example he can reasonably say that the dark side of McDonald’s is that children and teens are the ones being affected by these sugar filled drinks as they grow up. The reader is shocked at how drastic the change in a teen has been when it comes to intake of soda. Schlosser may sound like he is making assumptions at first, but once he introduces the study it makes more

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