How to view raw text in Emacs?

[nljlistbox2@gmail.com (N. Jackson)]

Sometimes when I'm using Emacs I want to see "what's really there"
rather than the view of the text that Emacs is showing me. So far, I
have not figured out how to do this. Usually after casting about in
Emacs for a solution, the frustration builds sufficiently that I switch
to Kate of Gedit to see what I want to see. I would like to learn how to
do this in Emacs.

For example, I open etc/enriched.txt. I realise that there is more there
than I'm seeing and am curious to see what is actually in the file. I
try `M-x fundamental-mode RET' which changes nothing. (I don't know why
I think it should, but that always seems to be what I try first.) Then I
see in the mode line that I'm in "Enriched" mode, so I try `M-x
enriched-mode RET' to turn it off, which does seem to turn it off (it's
nice that it's intuitive that way), but the view in the buffer doesn't
change. I try `M-x set-buffer-coding-system RET raw-text RET', but that
doesn't help either. I try `M-x set-buffer-coding-system RET
no-conversion RET', but again there is no apparent change.

Clearly I'm missing something here, but I'm not sure what it is. Any
pointers would be welcome.

Thanks.

N.