Ethical Life Redefined in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals

This study analyzes the young American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer’sastounding work of creative nonfiction Eating Animals (2009) from two ethical frameworks. First, Foer demonstrates contemporary American creative nonfiction’s propensity for ethical reflectionand dedication tothe forceful investigation of the disregarded and dismissed aspects of ourdaily moral existence, and demonstrates the sheer amount of research as well as intellectualbearing that such reflection requires. Second, inasmuch as Eating Animals is a study in/of ethics, it also presents new vistas for the recent “ethical turn” in literary studieswhose theoretical focus remains limited to the study of the novel. Through a close reading of Eating Animals for its avowed ethical stance and its enriching contribution in the mode of a transfigured reenactment ofthe current (re)turn to ethics within literary studies, this study bears witness to a new direction in contemporary American literature that draws its force from contemporary creative nonfiction’s increasing proclivity for truthful and ethical storytelling