In the article “The Pleasures of Eating” by Wendell Berry changes the way people will look at the food they purchase.  Wendell makes the reader begin to question large manufacturers and persuades the reader not to trust them.  He does this with the use of a variety of literary devices such as syntax, imagery, and diction.  He does not only use literary devices to compose his ideas, he also uses examples to bring to light real life scenarios the average American encounters when deciding what foods to purchase.  Wendell makes a strong impact on the way people purchase and view their foods.     

When analyzing this story and how its points are made, paragraphs three through five stand out significantly due to the exceptional use of imagery.  Large food manufacturers advertise there food products heavily, while smaller more organic food products do not receive the same type of treatment, as they do not have the money to advertise their products.  This causes the shopper to enter a store and, “…buy what they want- or what they have been persuaded to want.”.  People don’t really know what they want from their own research, however they trust the words and visuals presented in advertisements produced by the food industry.  This brings an image of the American shopper quickly reaching for the name-brand foods as opposed to the healthier more organic options.  He continues to discuss how this persuasion often times causes ignorance to what the food is actually made of.  Berry discusses how much of the food is made with chemicals and other unhealthy unnatural ingredients, yet people ignore this because they are not educated well enough on the food they intake.  The imagery displayed here allows people to think of themselves entering a grocery store and how they go about deciding what foods to purchase.  Furthermore, Berry continues in the next paragraph to say, “They apparently have little doubt that farms will continue to produce, but they do not know how or over what obstacles.”  The use of imagery here allows for people to delve into their own minds and question their previous ways of shopping.  Many food manufactures will mistreat animals; add chemicals to plants, etc. in order to produce food in the quickest way possible, ignoring the aspect of health in the foods.  People will typically just ignore this thought when it’s something that Berry shows should not be ignored.  

Berry also uses a bit of exaggeration in his imagery to drive home his main message, which is displayed in paragraph three when Berry exclaims, “The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his stomach.”  This creates a disgusting image that symbolizes the disgusting nature food producer’s display in the production of their foods.  Obviously, this statement is an exaggeration, but it puts an image in the reader’s mind of how the producers only truly care about the money.  It shows they don’t really care for the well being of their consumers and their health.  This type of imagery makes readers want to avoid these types of food producers and it elicits emotions of anger and betrayal.  

Not only does Berry’s imagery help create a strong argument in these paragraphs but so does his syntax.  When looking at paragraph two the reader sees many rhetorical questions being asked such as, “How fresh is it? How pure or clean is it, how free of dangerous chemicals?.” The syntax here causes for the reader to think about their own food choices once again, and it makes the point stronger that consumers do not question themselves on this often enough while purchasing food.  Paragraph two isn’t the only paragraph with interesting syntax.  In paragraph three Berry says, “the specialization of production induces specialization of consumption.”  This sentence makes the reader think to an extent as to what that really means; In simple terms this sentence is saying that people tend to rely on the specialized producers and buy there products without thinking twice.  Berry uses the word specialization twice in the sentence allowing for it to bring a correlation from the producers to the consumers, and truly summarizes how people become dependent upon large, commercialized producers.  It also sheds light on how these advertisements are not helping us make food choices but instead hinders us.  

Along with the syntax, Berry uses interesting diction to further his point of people needing to examine what foods they are ingesting into their body.  One word used often throughout this writing is a form of the word persuasion.  This indicates people aren’t making the decision for themselves yet they are allowing advertisements to convince them to buy a specific food product.  Berry also uses the word dependent.  The two words persuade and dependent go hand in hand in this writing as people are persuaded to buy a specific food, and this persuasion leads to a dependency on these food producers further causing them to trust what they see in an ad and not what they see in the ingredients.  This drives people to continuously purchase these food items over and over without a second thought.

Another example of how Berry’s diction helps further his argument is displayed in how he describes these large food producers’ ingredients.  He often labels them with words such as chemicals, which immediately causes the reader to grimace at his food choices.  The word chemical, when referring to food, typically has a strongly negative connotation.  He uses this word to strengthen the argument of how people do not realize how unnatural a lot of the food they’re eating is.  Furthermore, Berry uses words such as pre cooked and processed.  Both of these words indicate to readers that the food is extremely unnatural and inorganic.  

Berry was able to develop his points extremely well in this article due to his exceptional use of a variety of literary devices.  His use of syntax, imagery, and diction strongly convey his message in  direct and indirect way.  The story creates a very strong argument with the use of examples, and it causes for people to rethink how they enter a grocery store.   He was able to evoke emotion from the reader and cause the reader to re think their grocery store experience.  