One. Lexicon
1. scapegoat
2. stigmatization; see 198
3. glutton's crime; see 199 top
4. gluttony as a "sin": 199
5. apotheosis
6. Ugly American: boldly ignorant, self-indulgent, infantile, pushy, presumptuous, self-centered, prone to excess
7. Voyeuristic
8. Exhibitionist
Two. Professional Eating Contests Are a Celebration of the American Dream
1. Mindless entertainment, the sign of a dumbed-down culture
2. The aesthetic that more is better; the More Factor; More for more's sake
3. Competition combined with entertainment
4. Domination fantasies evoking the Barbarian Within
5. Training and discipline combined with the excess of gluttony: 212
6. Voyeuristic Curiosity of the Carnival Act; 213 bottom
7. Narcissistic Exhibitionism
8. American optimism has vitality but it's a vitality forever tied to arrested adolescence; as a people, we never grow up; see 214 top
Three. Essay Options
In Prose’s stunning essay “The Wages of Sin” we see that obesity is looked at, even in our secular society, from a religious standpoint, complete with _______________, ________________________, _______________________, and __________________________.
See Writing #6 on page 203 in which you compare and contrast the ways Prose and Jason Fagone (204) address our cultural obsession with overeating. 5-page outline: Summarize Prose's essay in a page and do the same for Fagone. Then write a thesis: While Prose exposes our food obsession in terms of __________________, ____________________, and ___________________, Fagone takes an opposing angle by showing that our food obsession ________________________, _________________, and _________________. Your final 3 pages would flesh out these 6 mapping components.
What characteristics in the American culture that are described in Joseph Epstein's "The Perpetual Adolescent" explain the popularity of professional eating contests, chronicled in Fagone's "In Gorging, Truth."
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