Summary Of David Foster Wallace's Consider The Lobster

In the op-ed piece “A Change of Heart about Animals”, Jeremy Rifkin emphasizes the similarities between humans and animals by providing results on scientific research studies to illustrate that humans should be more empathetic towards animals. In addition, he further explains how research results have changed the ways humans perceived animals and indicates solutions that were taken by other countries and organizations to help improve and protect animal rights.

The article “Consider the Lobster” by David Wallace opens a vivid, gruesome window, to a harsh truth that all lobster consumers push far back into the recesses of their minds. Wallace implores us to visit the controversial issue of boiling a live creature to death, for the sole purpose of our consumption. He uses a variety of literary persuasive tactics including the three rhetorical appeals Logos, Pathos and Ethos to drive home his argument to the reader.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals is a book about persuasion. Foer seeks to convince his readers to take any step in reducing what he believes is the injustice of harming animals. To achieve this, Foer employs many persuasion techniques and often changes his approach when he targets specific groups. His strategies include establishing himself as an ethical authority and appealing to his readers’ emotions, morals, and reason.

The lobster is a disgustingly beautiful creature, known for its delicate taste, menacing shell and controversy. In his essay, “Consider the Lobster”, David Foster Wallace describes the events and festivities of the Maine Lobster Festival and the history of the lobster to deliver a poignant message about the moral implications of killing and eating animals. Wallace is able to develop his position and vividly capture the audience’s attention through a strong use of humor, deliberate tonal shifts and a unique structure.

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.

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)

In the article All Animals Are Equal, written by Peter Singer addresses the inadequacies surrounding the rights of animals in the societies of today. Singer opens the article by presenting a scholarly parallels between the fight for gender equality, banishment of racism and the establishment of rights for “nonhumans.” In order to explain this constant set of inequalities that seem to riddle our society, Singer readily uses the term “speciesism”, which he acquired from a fellow animals rights advocator, Richard Ryder. Essentially, this term is defined by Singer as a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species. Singer claims that if this idea of speciesism

Many of us, nowadays, eat and enjoy eating meat but many would agree that this is actually not an ethical action. Michael Pollan, in his persuasive style article “An Animal's Place" published in The New Work Times Magazine, on November 10, 2002 intends to persuade his audience that humans should respect animals and as long as they are treated well in farms and give them a more peaceful life and death it will be fine to eat them. According to Pollan, in today's huge industrial farms, cruel and unbearable things happen that are against animals rights. There is a high possibility that in the future these actions will stop as already some protest for animal rights have begun, because animals have feelings and farms take advantage of them thinking that they are mere machines, making them suffer. The solution to this conflict according to the author who supports friendly farms that respect and give a fun and secure life for animals. I believe that the author is convincing because he first makes clear what the argument is about, he then presents both moral arguments and

We are not alone on this Earth. We, humans, have animals by our side. We share this inhabitable planet together with animals, and they should have same right as we do on this beautiful planet. Animals are pure instinctual living creatures who never think before following their instincts. They won’t think otherwise before killing a person. Animals who are able to surpass these barriers are able to receive our empathy and their rights, but in Jeremy Rifkin’s, “A Change of Heart About Animals,” he talks ideas about all animals should receive our empathy for great acts of the few. The individual animal receive its equal rights, not by a single entity achieving it for the mass, but by the individual must showing intelligences, emotions and feelings, and most importantly, the ability to co-exist with others; including human and other animals alike.

One topic that many scholars are debating right now is the topic of animal rights. The questions are, on what basis are rights given, and do animals possess rights? Two prominent scholars, Tom Regan and Tibor Machan, each give compelling arguments about animal rights, Regan for them and Machan against them. Machan makes the sharp statement, “Animals have no rights need no liberation” (Machan, p. 480). This statement was made in direct opposition to Regan who says, “Reason compels us to recognize the equal inherent value of these animals and, with this, their equal right to be treated with respect” (Regan, p. 477). Machan believes he has the best theory explaining why animals do not have rights. He makes this claim by first acknowledging how

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.” Calling the reader out on this linguistic practice develops a sense of self awareness. Though hidden in the footnote, to avoid creating a tangent in the overall argument and worse falling to the counterargument that “it's just semantics,” Foster Wallace throws these pieces in as curveballs- evidence that a reader was unlikely to expect nor be prepared to process. While intentionally he intentionally trespasses’ the readers comfort zone of their own communication, he makes his article relate, if only through these footnotes, to the ways in which they’ve previously engaged with the matter. As Foster Wallace situates the reader in the moral conundrum, he draws from the them a greater awareness of self and skepticism of the multiple party’s motivations which contributes to the overall multidimensional analysis of the

In this paper, I will focus on Bonnie Steinbock’s claim on whether or not we should give equal moral consideration to species outside our own species group. I will first determine what moral concern means, according to Peter singer, and explain how he views the human treatment of animals. I will then outline Steinbock’s argument against Singer’s position and explain how her criticism is part of a much broader issue: that is moral concern. I will finally make my argument against Steinbock as well as address any issues she could possibly raise against my argument.

How animals are treated can also affect daily human life. Animal rights are rights given to animals to be free from exploitation, cruelty, neglect, and abuse and enumerates further rights for laboratory animals, farm animals, companion animals, and wildlife. Some animals should have a Bill of Rights. This law does go against centuries of human culture. This law would increase the cost of food. This law would hinder medical research.

During the 1990s, David Foster Wallace wrote various, interpretive essays that represented narratives in a collection titled A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. The main essay, titled as the collection, was a thoughtful reflection of Wallace’s experience on Nadir, his first extravagant cruise. The hundred page range of the essay gives way to Wallace’s verbose quality, illustrating his commitment to recap his past experiences accompanied with in-depth analyses. Wallace’s other essays in the collection emits a similar style, with detailed descriptions of his experiences and perceptions of the world. Not all works carry those story-like qualities, but are structured as more of literary analyses presented by fluid writing. Through all of the words and subjects he writes

“In 2016, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated that Americans ate an average of 54.3 pounds of beef, 92.1 pounds of chicken, and 50.4 pounds of pork, per person, per year” (Vegetarianism). Food production counts for only one of the many injustices animals face daily. Although they have been proven emotionally intelligent, mankind views these entities as subservient and continue to harm them. People around the world have created organizations that work to ameliorate the treatment of animals. As the animal rights movement nobly fights to improve the conditions of these living creatures, daily human activities and the moral values of some prolong the acceptance of animal equality.