50 pages • 1 hour read
Michael PollanThe Omnivore's Dilemma
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part III, Chapters 18-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary: “Hunting: The Meat”
The night before the hunt, Pollan was nervous. He had agreed to hunt for pigs in Sonoma County. As Pollan moved through the woods, he noted how he and the prey were involved in an interlocked game of alertness. Pollan was also disgusted by his own description, annoyed at the euphemisms hunters often use when speaking about the sport. Pollan justified the hunt to himself, recognizing that wild boars are not wild at all. Instead, they were introduced via the Columbia Exchange.
Pollan details his experiences in the woods, seeking a pig. His hunting partner says that he is hunting meat rather than pursuing a sport. He likens his mental state to the influence of marijuana. He is singularly focused and able to tune out everything around him. He describes hunting as a return to a natural state of being. Pollan’s hunting excursion was unsuccessful, but one of his partners managed to kill a small boar. When the group returned to their vehicle, they had a large lunch which left Pollan feeling less motivated. When he returned to hunting and spotted four pigs, he realized he had left his gun unloaded. His partner managed to kill the second pig of the day.
Pollan questioned whether he needed to go hunting after his unsuccessful trip. His partner had gifted him meat. But he decided that the actual killing of the animal was an important component of his research. On his second trip, Pollan was successful. He killed a large sow. He was flooded with a surge of emotions, but he did not feel remorse right away. While helping to gut and clean the animal, Pollan was unsure whether he would be able to eat it. His remorse came later when he looked at the pictures they had taken on the day.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Gathering: The Fungi”
Pollan ruminates on the difference between mushroom hunting and gardening. Looking for mushrooms requires the hunter to move through unfamiliar territory, always looking down. The species is illusive, designed to blend in. Pollan’s hunting partner called and asked him if he wanted to hunt for chanterelles on private ground. His partner spotted the fungi before Pollan. It took a while for Pollan to get the hang of “getting his eyes on” and noticing how the mushrooms pop up in the landscape (369).
Pollan finds mushrooms to be an elusive subject. Books do little to shed light on the complex and diverse patterns of the species. Mushrooms are also difficult to observe, and many species are nearly impossible to cultivate. Morel hunting proved to be a different experience from chanterelle hunting. The landscape was more difficult to traverse, and Pollan likened it to “survival training” (381). Hunting for morels confirmed what Pollan was discovering about the elusiveness of mushrooms. His guides told him that, while theories could be helpful in finding the fungi, one must be prepared to abandon all theories because exceptions always cropped up.
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Perfect Meal”
Pollan’s perfect meal was not perfect. He admits that not every ingredient was cooked properly. However, for him, it was the perfect meal because it represented the culmination of his efforts and research. An attempt to harvest salt from the San Francisco Bay resulted in brownish, greasy granules that Pollan determined were not fit for the dinner. In fact, Pollan found the rules that he had placed upon himself (everything must be harvested and cooked by himself and must be in season) were extremely restricting, and the meal turned out to be far more meager than he had originally planned.
Once Pollan landed on a menu, he realized that he had already broken several of his rules. However, he was excited at the prospect. A small taste of his pig in the form of ragu had filled him with anticipation to share the meat with his friends. Pollan prepared a detailed schedule for his labor-intensive meal. He saw the food as a way to thank the people who had helped him on his journey, as well as a way to pay tribute to the plants and animals that had been killed for the meal. Pollan describes the food they ate with a sense of transcendence: Having a full connection to the animals and plants made the entire experience something completely different.
Chapters 18-20 Analysis
Pollan opens the book with the question of what humans should eat, but his final chapters do not provide an answer to this inquiry. Rather, Pollan’s work exposes the many nuances of the dinner table and details the paradoxical arguments that surround food issues. The final three chapters offer an interesting juxtaposition to the beginning of the book. In contrast to Pollan’s detailing of the high-yield industrial corn farms, his final chapters reveal a meager crop of cherries and mushrooms. In contrast to the troubling feedlots in Kansas, his final chapters show a nervous journalist killing his first pig and sharing it with his friends. This foil, perhaps, represents the answer to Pollan’s question, even if it is not spelled out directly for the reader: The theme of “Food as Connection to the Natural World” is the key to Pollan’s answer.
The reason his final meal is so memorable and satisfying is because every ingredient on the table has a story. Pollan feels deeply connected to the food because he has gathered, harvested, and killed every item on the table. His final meal is starkly different to the description of the McDonald’s meal earlier in the work. Chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers read less like descriptions of food than as a critique of formless shapes and simple flavors. The final meal of pig and mushrooms is described in great sensory detail, and Pollan is clearly proud of his offering.
The meal is also significant because it has no waste. The lack of waste juxtaposes with the surplus-heavy and high-yield operations represented in industrialized agriculture. Even Salatin’s pastoral farm meal does not come close to Pollan’s experience with food that he has gathered and prepared himself. By focusing on fungi in this last section, Pollan presents a unique view of the omnivore’s dilemma. Mushrooms represent the paradox between the pleasure of eating and the potential dangers. Mushrooms are a delicious food and highly sought after, but many people are wary of foraging for them because so many toxic mushrooms litter the forest floor. For Pollan, this epitomizes the struggle of the omnivore: Food is never simple. It is riddled with paradoxes and problems around every corner. Even as he considers whether it is right for him to kill a wild hog that is not indigenous to California, he struggles with the ethical and moral stances that plague his conscious mind.
He decides, at last, that connecting to the food through the killing of the animal may teach him something—about life, about the food industry, and about himself. This, he believes, is the function of food.
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By Michael Pollan
