"Fast Food Nation" by Erich Schossler
...ween success levels. The workers automatically think that they do not belong to the same group of people in that arena. This is because they themselves are affected by the perception that fast food industry is somehow less important and elegant than others economic fields. To Rachael and the other workers, the success the professionals have is something esoteric, abstract, and inaccessible. Schlosser’s point here is that the lifestyle associated with financial success is so alien to the fast food workers that they could never envision themselves ever attaining that level of succeeding, as defined by mainstream society and the fast food industry itself. However, Schlosser then continues to present a diametrically different definition of success in the last three paragraphs, with a quote from Christopher Reeve, “Since my accident, I’ve been realizing… that success means something quite different (107).” During his speech in the conference, Reeve used his own experiences retrospectively to state that success is something thing else to him, rather than attaining wealth. This opposite viewpoint shows that Reeve’s idea of success is totally different from the idea assimilated by the fast food industry, which is largely materialistic. Rather than value money and wealth, Reeve understands that success is largely metaphysical. His perspective clashes with other viewpoints show just how shallow the fast food industry really is. Here, Reeve is used as a metaphor for the goodness in our society—a loud, frustrated, helpless, but ultimately disregarded cry for sanity in a culture gone mad over greed. By giving us these contrasting viewpoints, Schlosser’s argument is enhanced with a virtual debate over who actually realizes success, and what that even means. Continuously using irony, Schlosser goes on to dissect the meaning of success and shows just how shameless the fast food chains really are towards their workers, and how self-centered their general beliefs really are. The most emotionally powerful irony in the chapter is directly after the previously mentioned Christopher Reeve’s speech. Schlosser states: “Moment after Reeve is wheeled off the stage, Jack Groppel, the next speaker, walks up to the microphone and starts his pitch (107).” The fact that Groppel and presumably others in the audience so quickly abandon Reeve’s words of wisdom displays that the idea the industry has of success is hard-set. If not even the shattering words of Reeve can knock sense into these business professionals’ souls, then nothing sort of a miracle will. They are heartless in their tactics. Ironically, the reader would never expect for Reeve’s words to be so hastily thrown out by someone with any more than a miniscule of humanity. The heartlessness of fast-food practices is shown to have been praised by Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, when he says: “Eventually I opened a McDonald’s across the street from that store [the original McDonald brothers’ restaurant], which they had renamed The Big M… and it ran them out of business (97).” Kroc brags here that he has succeeded in throwing the McDonalds out of the fast food business, in a classic example of the apprentice vanquishing his mentor. Schlosser highlights this irony because it stirs up emotion in the reader as Kroc’s words appear cold-hearted and ruthless, with no gratitude, compassion, or sympathy for the brothers who sold him the business he used to build a fast food empire. Ray Kroc personifies the attitude of the entire fast food industry, with its cutthroat, swindling practices. Another irony being used in this chapter appears in the way Schlosser describes how fast food industry is running at this moment. Since the moment it appeared, fast food industry has developed tremendously and become one of the most important sections in the economy. Now it even becomes the motivation for other economic potential field to keep growing, as Schlosser says, “It was the fast food industry that turned franchising into a business model soon emulated by retails chains throughout the U.S. (95)” However, taking a closer look into its development, the fast food industry contains a bloody competition among its major components: the franchisors and franchisees. Cooperation and toleration are not options in fast food industry, or at least they are limited to some low levels. The franchisor— franchisee relationship is not a solid and friendly one. In fact, it is a two-way beneficial cooperation, which is easily broken and eventually results in aggressive opposition of one side toward the other. “The franchisor gives up some control by not wholly owning each operation; the franchisee sacrifices a great deal of independence by having to obey the company’s rules (94),” Schlosser states. In brief, the ironies the author uses present the reader with an emotional reaction, and realization that the fast food industry is a cold, Darwinist institution with no consideration for those who do not achieve success. Schlosser’s use of religious references is powerful rhetoric because it demonstrates the seemingly almighty appearance of the fast food restaurants. He compares fast food owners to religious leaders when he says, “Like other charismatic leaders of new faiths, Kroc asked people to give up their former lives and devote themselves fully to McDonalds (95).” Schlosser is emphasizing through the Kroc example that franchisees were expected to take on a restaurant as if it were a new religion, and thereby absorb fast-food values in lieu of religious ones. Through tough contracts, and high franchising fees, the author makes it clear that the restaurant owners of today are expected to make the same commitments. This is due to the industry’s pseudo-religious premise that “the meek shall no longer inherit the earth; the go-getters will get it and everything that goes with it (106).” This mentality is blasphemous to traditional, more humble beliefs, but Schlosser explains by these words that traditional religion “seems hopelessly out of date (106)” in our fast paced society. The result is that there is a wide gap between those who are aggressive and money-making, and the typical worker who never becomes a model of success. In order for this system to thrive, a new way of thinking is necessary to justify it. Schlosser describes this new way of thinking as a sort of fast-food religion...