She Is The Meat Made Manifest Analysis

Ruth Ozeki’s novel explores numerous relationships: human and animal, human and human, man and wife, and many more. An important relationship investigated is the relationship between truth, authenticity, and consumerism, and is depicted in many ways throughout the novel. One approach being through the criteria that the Japanese network wants in every featured wife that is on the show. For example, the mold that the wife should fit is described as being, “attractive, appetizing, and all-American. She is the Meat Made Manifest: ample, robust, yet never tough or hard to digest”(8). The description provided by the network simplifies and ojectifies both the female body and mind, as well as the meat, almost boiling them down to nearly just matters of sex. Jane pushes for real and genuine women that do not fit the 1960’s housewife mold, but the network demands for the Mrs. Flowers

They go on to critique Ozeki for using stories about the abundant number of individuals that have been impacted by the industry. Suggesting that by doing so, it tugs at the heartstrings of the reader and motivates them to be more concerned and angered by the practices used in mass livestock farming. However, another point to the statement made is that perhaps it takes sympathetic characters and a sad story to get people to care, making the assumed intention of Ozeki’s novel a success. Harrison progresses her thought on Ozeki’s use of narration by stating, “While contextualizing stories of environmental injustice, Ozeki’s novel also suggests that awareness of how storytelling shapes environmental knowledge and ignorance is crucial to enabling political