An Animal's Place Rhetorical Analysis

Meating with Thinking

Have you ever felt yourself cruel when you are eating meat? Michael Pollan represents his struggle to defend his meat eating habit in “An Animal’s Place”. In the first several pages, he narrates the arguments of Peter Singer and discusses whether the animals should be viewed equally as human. At this point, he tries to illustrate many distinctions between the animals and the humans, but he finds it still hard to decide whether it is right for people to consume meat. Pollan also describes what goes on behind the scenes in the meat industry and this turns out to be a call to us to think about the real welfare for the animals. After doing a lot of research, he then finds out that there are some farms working for animals’

welfare that try to treat them better while they are alive. Pollan points out that humans should be able to eat meat as long as we treat animals with respect. Through the use of narratives, compare and contrasts, and citing experts, Pollan urges readers to do what he has done--resolve to eat only meat from animals that have been well treated.
Pollan is quite convincing and smart, he knows exactly what his intended audience (who do not want to be blind to the animal cruelty but do not want to change their meat eating habit) want to hear and can very well guide people’s idea by his language.
Pollan uses a narrative to frame and develop the debate between meat eaters and animal activistis.

He describes a scene in which he is eating a steak at the Palm and reading the Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation. The book is talking about animals’ equality in relation to humans and animal rights, but at the same time, what he is doing is eating animals, like everybody normally does. He uses this dissonance to arouse our interest and make the audience feel involved, succeeding in making a connection to readers to lead meat eaters to reconsider their practives. He mentions the opinions of Singer’s and other animal rights activists. He tries to guide us to address the problem by narrating a lengthy description of the research he did. In order to defend his meat-eating against Singer’s argument that we should not eat animals, he starts to establish a back-and-forth argument about the meat eating habit to put forward the main points of his argument. Here he concedes that the animal activists often make good points. For example, when he talks about standards like intelligence to divide humans and nonhumans, he wonders “If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?” (par. 12). The debate he shows us between him and the animal rights activists helps him build a connection with the audience. It is like the author is seeking for the facts just

like we are, successfully making his argument more interactive.
Later, there comes one detailed description of his visit to Polyface Farm, which enlightened him that the meat eating habit is not the problem, but the way we treat animals is the point. By showing us his personal experience at a “good farm”, Pollan leads people to his main idea and he also finds the solution to his dilemma.
Pollan does a good job of supporting his opinion by using compare and contrasts. When considering Singer’s defense of animal equality, Pollan compares the intelligence and moral sense of infants and chimps (par.15-18), trying unsuccessfully to illustrate that there are many differences between animals and people. The general consensus that Pollan reaches is that “the higher animals are wired much like we are for the same evolutionary reasons” (par. 34), thus conceding to Singer’s argument——animals should be treated equally as human. However, he later argues that human pain differs from animal pain because of our possession of language and emotions. He contrasts the reaction to pain of animals and humans (par.39-46). He uses the example of castration. Certainly, animals will feel the pain of castration, but they can easily get over it in a way that humans do not because “a man can comprehend the full implications of castration” (par. 36), which implies that animals do not suffer the same pain (or depths of pain) as people.
Another contrast Pollan uses to fortify his thesis is his visit to Polyface Farm, which enlightened him in the way animals are treated in American industrial animal farms.

He contrasts the way animals are treated in industrial farms to the Polyface Farm to discuss what is the ideal place set for animals. He mentions Matthew Scully’s book Dominion. In this book, Scully calls the contemporary farm “our own worst nightmare” (par.44) The hens are “force-molted” and animals are treated as machines incapable of feeling pain. The scene of Polyface Farm is totally different. Each species can fully express its nature. Six different food animals are raised in an ecologically sound and humane way. Cows can graze happily, pigs and chickens have their open pastures. This kind of comparison proves that animals here are happy and we can eat these animals in an ethical way, which contradicts Singer’s point. In this way, Pollan illustrates that not all the farms are full of mistreatment of animals, there still exists a farm that works for animal welfare, and we can choose to eat the animals that have been slaughtered in a peaceful

way.