Wendell Berry, a man with strong beliefs rooted in the 18th century, argues to the people
of the 20th century to eat responsibly in his essay 'The Pleasures of Eating'. Filled with
information of the food industry and farming knowledge, Barry uses the various rhetorical proofs
in making his argument-- people have lost the pleasures of eating-- successful. I will provide an
analytical view at how well Wendell Berry uses logos, ethos, and pathos to convince people of
the worthiness of his argument.

Berry begins with introducing the audience to a concept that many people of today would
consider to be hippie-ish. 'I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act' (124).
Berry takes the act of eating and incorporates it into the lengthy process of birth, life, and then
death. With this deductive reasoning the audience is being shown their position in the bigger
picture; he then establishes an ethos that immediately connects his argument with the audience:
'They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as
participants in agriculture' (124). He is saying that people are not aware that they are part of the
agricultural ethics that govern farming as well; he is aware that most of his audience does not see
eating in this way, but utilizing his knowledge as a farmer and his knowledge of consumer
ideology he begins to persuade the audience with this logos. His tone within this section
establishes a sense that the audience is ignorant and passive to the pleasures of eating. Such
pathos is used to created concern and curiosity in the audience.

Barry continues to successfully use rhetoric to involve the audience into the argument
with questions. After talking about what the average consumer does think he impressively goes
through a series of questions, which to my disbelief sound familiar; by this inception Berry
implants pathos within the audience which is meant to produce further consideration of these
questions. These questions also share knowledge that the audience may not have had beforehand
but now do. The logos of sharing good knowledge depicts Berry in a good light to the audience.
This same tactic is not used when he goes on to talk about the different farms, but on the
contrary, he uses logos to strengthen his statement that eating is an agricultural act: 'They
apparently have little doubt that farms will continue to produce, but they do not know how or
over what obstacles. For them, then, food is pretty much an abstract idea'something they do
now know or imagine'until it appears on the grocery shelf or on the table' (124). He raises
awareness and concern again with this statement. He utilizes pathos to keep the attention of the
audience.

Berry previously mentions the term 'passive consumer' in his take on eating as an
agricultural act and with his next topic he goes into more detailed about it and its effects. He is
using the pathos of calling the audience passive consumers so they can understand why they are
not eating responsibly. A passive consumer is a person who does not concern himself or herself
with the circle-of-life process it takes to produce food, but rather only taking into account
personal limitations and desires. Barry utilizes his simile and metaphorical skills to describe the
relationship between the consumer and the food industry: 'The ideal industrial food consumer
would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her
stomach' (125). As entertaining as this description is, the deductive reasoning used within this
section informs the audience of the food industries motives and discredits the ethics of them as
well. This use of rhetoric captures the attention of the audience because it directly involves
them.

Berry is from such a contrastive and differing background than the majority of the people
he is writing this essay for, but he is still able to find a similarity between him and the audience
to establish an ethos: 'But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food
and its sources are controlled by someone else' (125). Here Berry implies that no American can
ignore the cry of freedom. The word itself establishes a patriotic and appreciative feeling within
most Americans; this is how Berry uses pathos for this section. He challenges the proud people
of this free and independent country to not boast and fight for one freedom while being tricked
and deceived out of another; this challenge is built upon his logos of freedom used throughout
the text.

Berry then compares the food industry to the sex industry: 'like industrial sex, industrial
eating has become a degraded, poor, and paltry thing' (125). Sex has its own intrinsic beauty and
values that pornography and prostitution have degraded; these logos of knowledge shared by him
and the audience helps Berry prove his argument. He establishes an ethos of good will by talking
about these things that take this natural act of human life and reveals more of the unethical acts
of the food industry. In their acts of making it about money and easy to access they are breaking
them away from pleasure: 'We hurry through our meals to go to work and hurry through our
work in order to 'recreate' ourselves in the evenings and on weekends and vacations' (125). In
this section pathos of lost trust and betrayal between the food industry and the consumer is being
focused to supplement the argument. Berry talks about how the people want these things like sex
and eating but the people are not getting them because these industries are making the people
passive and ignorant of what it is that the people really want. He states that this is no way to seek
a higher quality of life and the audience needs to learn more about their food. He urges everyone
to utilize inductive reasoning with their food purchasing procedures.

In his call to eat responsibly he gives a list of 7 actions. In this section, Berry is giving a
solution to the trap of the food industry making people passive consumers. Abandoning the
helpless, weak, and dependent tone of his pathos' proofs that he has been talking about all this
time, he takes an opposite route with the tone of his pathos related proofs. Using words like
'participate', 'learn', and 'your own', Berry is giving an encouraging emotion to the audience.
His descriptions and details in explaining the 7 actions show he's seen them being used to
successfully gain eating responsibility or he uses them to personally gain eating responsibility.
Nevertheless, the logos within the 7 actions gives rhetorical proof that he knows what he is
talking about. With the same notion that Americans enjoy their freedom and building upon the
ethos established from the food industry degrading the pleasures of eating food, Berry utilizes
the 7 actions as a way to reclaim the freedom lost by the audience. He initiates a call to turn the
passive natures of consumers into a nature of action. Providing a solution or means to fix the
problem helps Berry convince the audience that his argument is substantial.

Berry's final topic of the text is a description of what the pleasure of eating should
encompass in full. 'Eating with the fullest pleasure 'pleasure, that is, that does not depend on
ignorance'is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world' (128). He
switches to a feeling of appreciation and longing to establish pathos. This pathos here is
necessary; Berry considers the knowledge that he is using to prove why people should seek
eating with the fullest pleasure, and it is not a shared knowledge. This knowledge is this section's
logos. Logos is necessary to show how through the necessary effort an urban consumer can eat in
an ethical way to benefit the agricultural community, which includes themselves.
