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“Chew On This” An insight into the secrets of the fast food industry

Samuel Humanities , , , , 0 Comment

“Chew On This” is a book by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson which talks about the fast food industry, including the invention, the advertisements, the employees, the production of fast food products and how it affects our everyday lives. Although this book doesn’t have a main character or chronological story timeline, it is informative on the parts of the fast food industry that it does not advertise, including the working conditions of the meatpacking plants, the children-centralized advertisement and how fast food has taken over school cafeterias in the United States and United Kingdom.

One of the themes of this book is that people (or businesses) sacrifice ethics for profit. Examples of this in the book is how the working conditions in the meat processing plants are bad for profit, the shift periods for certain fast food employees is absurd and how the strawberry milkshakes that we drink at fast food restaurants might not even be made out of strawberries but chemicals.

I think people should read this book because it is very informative on the secrets of the fast food industry and that it gives several personal narratives as examples as well as statistics and events.

 

 

Theme in “A Sound of Thunder”

Samuel Humanities , , , ,

High self-esteem causes people to believe in themselves and feel secure but too much self-esteem can cause people to not realize the difficulties of challenges. In the story “A Sound of Thunder”, the main character Eckels goes back to the past to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He goes to the past with Travis, who is the safari guide and several other hunters. The big idea of this story is about time travel and how it may cause mass-destruction in the future.

In the story A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury, the author believes that self-esteem sometimes causes people to underestimate challenges. Travis, the hunting guide, lectured Eckels on the consequences of changing the future but “Eckels, [on the metal path], aimed his rifle playfully” (Bradbury, 8). Despite Travis’s lengthy explanation on how traveling to the past might affect the future, Eckels still decides to aim his gun playfully because of the excitement and ego-boost of killing a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Eckels also had lots of self-esteem in defeating a Tyrannosaurus Rex and believing that he can kill one. Later on in the story, Eckels boasts about the fact that he will kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex with the rest of his team: “’I’ve hunted tiger, wild boar… but now, this is it’” (Bradbury, 8) but after sighting the T-Rex Eckels said that “It can’t be killed. We were fools to come. This is impossible” (Bradbury, 9). Eckels has a lot of self-esteem in killing a dinosaur, therefore deciding to attempt to go to the past but when the challenge comes Eckels finally realizes that the challenge is too big and decides to give up. This shows that because of Eckel’s self-esteem he decided to attempt a challenge which ended up being too hard.