This is the construction Schlosser follows in this chapter.
Schlosser's style and progression in this chapter both builds and strengthens his argument in several ways. The picture plays on typical views of families while also detailing a specific instance of the problems that occur in the slaughterhouse and meat packing world. The passage that follows does the same thing, at first noting that nothing seems especially amiss, but then notes sees the workers, "about half of them women, almost all of them young and Latino," and that a few of the women...are sweating, even though the place is freezing cold." These subtle problems, like the subtlety of the man's odd posture in the photograph at the start of the passage, reveal deeper issues -- like the blood running down the man's arm. His description of the armor that the workers wear and his comment that the knife makes it through, anyway, makes it clear right...
Yet Schlosser's continued subtlety even after this rather un-subtle opening allows him to make his point even stronger.
By continually "revealing" the secret problems beneath the surface of what is observed, Schlosser is able to tie the reader's emotions into their intellectual understanding of what he is describing. His appeals to surprise and shock strengthen the automatic disgust that many will feel when reading his description of gore, just as many are sure to recoil from the blood on the man's arm in the opening photograph. This recoil will lead to a deeper engagement with the text. In this section of Fast Food Nation, Schlosser gives the reader a glimpse of the real people and real problems lurking in the underbelly of established industries, but he doesn't merely list these issues. Rather, he aims for people's guts, where they are the most likely to hear him.
