Are We Really What We Eat? An Analysis of “Consider the Lobster” In David Foster Wallace’s essay “Consider the Lobster” he argues that we as a human race should be empathetic to what we eat and close the gap between animal rights activists and gourmet food lovers in which he does so very effectively. The largest point of David’s argument is the issue of morality, this is a strategic move on his end because as human beings we are all concerned with how we are perceived by society and focus our lives and actions around the concept of conforming to societal norms. His strong stance against such large consumption of lobster pushes the reader to believe that his viewpoints are more than just about lobster. He wants the reader to understand that what is accepted by society is not what’s always morally right. …show more content…
The festival needs little to no explanation. People from numerous different areas gather to indulge in immense amounts of lobsters. While Wallace finds no issue with this part of the festivities he finds the need for concern when a cook arrives and literally boils lobsters alive in front of everyone within the audience. It’s easy to ignore because it’s only lobster, right? Wallace even says what lobsters are by definition.
“A crustacean is an aquatic arthropod of the class Crustacea, which comprises crabs, shrimp, barnacles, lobsters, and freshwater crayfish. The point is that lobsters are basically giant sea insects…not nice to look at. They’ll eat some live shellfish, certain kinds of injured fish, and sometimes one another.” (Wallace
The article “Consider the Lobster” by David Wallace was first published in August 2004 and it has led to a lot of public controversies based on the morality and ethicality, surrounding the massive cooking of the lobster. There have been a lot of debates also from the vegetarians and the animal rights activists concerning the great lobster festival held at the Penobscot festival every late July. One thing we ought to understand is that the lobster is a summer food, and most people would want to have it freshly caught from the sea. In addition, it is a festival that is performed once a year, and therefore it gives them some time to reproduce. However, the central issue raised concerning this festival is based on the fact that some people feel that the festival is completely against the animal rights, and especially inflicts pain to the lobsters.
“Consider the Lobster” Reading Response One It is time to speak about vegetables and their truth for once, and the truth is this. Plants, including vegetables suffer as well, not only lobsters, other animals, and humans. Vegetables often suffer when they are sometimes being snatched out of the ground, eaten, and cooked. Plants and lobsters may not suffer the same exact way, but that doesn’t change anything.
The essay I chose was “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace published in August 2004. The purpose of the essay is to point out the consideration and suffering of the lobster and more specifically, he uses the Maine Lobster Festival as an example. His introduction begins with the background and culture of the MLB. He even goes in to detail about the paid attendance of the festival, all the festivities that are held. From carnival rides to a parade and he even stated the amount of fresh caught lobsters (25,000).
In David Foster Wallace’s article “Consider the Lobster,” he describes the harsh reality of lobster eating. At the site of the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker at the Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace describes in detail the brutal treatment of lobsters in order for people to seek pleasure in their appetite. Wallace’s argument is that it is not right to “boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure” (700-701). He thoroughly describes the process in which lobsters are boiled alive in order to support his argument that because lobsters have feelings too, we should not boil sentient creatures alive for our pleasure. Wallace’s argument complicates Nijhuis’ view on nature because Nijhuis makes the point that people should essentially
An essay written by David Foster Wallace titled with” Consider the Lobster” reflects his own opinion and experience in the Maine Lobster Festival. Which tells the reader to consider the lobsters and their life with their feelings. The writer is mentioning some important points of consuming lobsters and how its related to an ethical issue, methods of cooking lobsters, low class food in 1800s, how lobsters are feeling pain, how lobsters behave, and their nervous systems. So in this essay, I will clarify the main points that Wallace mentioned in “Consider the Lobster”. First of all , Wallace talking about the festival and showing that Maine Lobster festival takes place in late July yearly on the western side of Penobscot Bay (midcoast trigon).
The book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, was written by Michael Pollan and describes a man’s interest in discovering where certain foods truly come from and explain why the humans of today struggle to find something to eat compared to the humans of the past. Pollan embarks on four separate quests having each serve a purpose to give him insight on America’s dynamic and complexed reception of food. In his first quest, Pollan watches a cow and sees its development up until it gets slaughtered. This experience reflects on commercial farming and tries to show animal development in relation to their feed.
From personal experience, I sense acidic undercurrents, a bursting bubble, and a rusted infrastructure; a western world that is growing, yet sinking. All these forms of decay make me speculate on how things got to be this way, but also what I should do in an attempt to change the tide. In David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster,” I am consistently puzzled on his concept regarding animals’ ‘right to life’ deeming some sort of equality in animal lives compared to human lives. A selection from this text that that sticks out to me and could stand alone as the main point of this text is when Wallace talks about how people would never stand around at a food festival where cows are publicly slaughtered. He says, “Try to imagine a Nebraska Beef Festival at which part of the festivities is watching the trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and slaughtered right there on the World’s Largest Killing Floor or something - there’s no way” (Wallace 24?).
In August 2004, Gourmet Magazine published award winning novelist David Foster Wallace’s article “Consider the Lobster”. In the article, he focuses on the negative experiences he had at the Maine Lobster Festival. He later uses the opportunity to ask rhetorical questions about the morality behind cooking lobsters alive and if they feel pain while being cooked. Simply, the main question he poses is, “is it alright to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” (Wallace, 2004, p.4) Gourmet magazine was the first monthly publication exclusively for food and wine.
The beginning of the essay, the tone and diction are both lighthearted and inconsequential- full of basic observations and details. As the argument progresses, the tone shifts to be much more serious, even the footnotes hold a more serious perspective and address more insightful issues. Even in the moments of sincerity, Wallace builds a place of non-threatening engagement, reassuring the audience that he is not an expert either and any decisions about the consumption of meat is an individual one. Such is evident in Footnote 14; Wallace explores the linguistic trends in naming food, then immediately identifies himself as a non-expert by restating that is is just a theory and asking about “biblio-historic reasons” that could unravel his whole
When I read this sentence in David Foster Wallace’s essay “Consider the Lobster”, I felt a distinctly physical sense of repulsion and empathy: “Lobsters don’t have much in the way of eyesight or hearing, but they do have an exquisite tactile sense, one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs that protrude through their carapace.” The phrase “exquisite tactile sense” is what really struck me, not because it’s a particularly special phrase in and of itself but because it was placed in the passage after terms like “live dismemberment” and “knife-in-the-head method” had been thrown out for the reader’s consideration. I can’t help but think that Foster Wallace did this intentionally as a way of emotionally skewering the reader; all I
Ethics can be based off of preference on this topic by acknowledging that lobsters are sentient beings and that humans should have “the willingness to exert personal agency and accept responsibility”(Wallace 6) if they partake in the practice of boiling lobsters. Another step towards a moral and ethical practice is trying to understand why humans disconnect and dissociate themselves from the similarities found in other species. It is acknowledged that the “clacking” of lobsters in a boiling pot are indications of pain, but there are prolong and complicated effort to reach this answer. This difficulty stems from the fact that lobsters are not place on the same level of importance. The author states, “I have not succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of selfishly convenient.”
In the essay, “Consider the Lobster,” the writer, David Foster Wallace, analyze the pain that Lobster’s feel when they are being cooked alive to be eaten by humans. The main point of the essay is to inform the readers about the issue of killing animas just for the benefit of our humanistic pleasure. The author used specific details. He is very detailed in informing the readers of how the Maine Lobster Festival has been celebrated.
On page 60, footnote 8 compares the pegging/banding of lobsters’ claws to the debeaking of broiler chickens, the cropping of swines’ tails, and the dehorning of cattle. Recognizing that the reader will likely fail to see the impact of the banding, Foster Wallace provides the comparison of other similar practices that will likely be more promptly deemed unacceptable. Under footnote 14, Foster Wallace extends the comparison, driving the reader to understand the distinction made between the consumption of mammals and non-mammals that is notable in speech. When describing mammals as food, we use separate words to distinguish them as creatures and dishes, such as “cow” and “beef,” and “pig” and “pork.” However, non-mammals share the same names in the wild and on menus, such as “shrimp,” “salmon,” and “lobster.”
Most people don't know that eating food releases a sensation in the brain, and thats why people are so quick to fall in love with food. A food that has consistently wowed people with its delicate taste is the Maine lobster. Although many people enjoy it as a meal it has continued to cause controversy because of its inhumane way of being cooked. In 2004 David Foster Wallace argued that those who eat lobster overlook that it is a living creature “Consider the Lobster”. Throughout the article Wallace used rhetorical techniques to argue his point.
The consumption of animal meat is highly accepted in today’s society, however, the methods, in which the animals are killed are sometimes questioned for their cruelty. David Wallace, in considering the Lobster, takes the readers to the Maine Lobster Festival, where the consumption of lobsters is exploited, and the festival's attendees celebrate these acts. However, the essay goes furthermore than narrating the lobster’s festival, because through sensory details, and different techniques, he makes the readers question society’s morality. By stressing the cruelty it takes boiling lobsters alive, Wallace is capable of creating a sense of awareness in society decisions that demonstrate their corrupted morality, and how it affects directly others (like lobsters)