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Summary Of Consider The Lobster By David Wallace

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In David Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster”, the Maine Lobster Festival (MLF) is profiled. The festival takes place every year in the Western Penobscot Bay area from July 31 to August 3. The area is described as “the nerve stem of Maine’s lobster industry”. For almost the entirety of the piece Wallace takes a topical approach and assumes the reader has very little knowledge of the lobster. He goes into detail about all the different things that go on at the MLF using lengthy run on sentences. He even details the vast assortment of different lobster dishes that one could find at the festival. Wallace then goes into the origin of lobster and all that it entails. He explains how they are classified, how it has transformed from something that prisoners …show more content…

Wallace includes the methods of preparing lobster, a discussion of whether the lobsters can feel pain, and describes PETA protesters giving out pamphlets advising festival goers to not eat the food. Over the course of the article, it changes from being informational about the actual festival, to a rhetorical question about the treatment of the animals that we as humans consume. I didn’t quite know how I felt about this article when I finished reading. Although Wallace is clearly confused and uncertain about his position, with all the lengthy footnotes, he does go to great lengths to weigh both sides of the argument. (if you can even call it that) What I was left to consider was the reasoning and justification for the treatment of the animals that will become our food. The information and the questions that Wallace presents attempt to make the reader consider things they either haven’t thought about or try not to think about. I was left with the impression that he is still uncertain on the moral and ethical implications that boiling lobsters alive raises. On one hand he seems to think that it is wrong because the lobsters seem to

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