“Consider the Lobster” Summary
08/26/2013

David Foster Wallace’s essay “Consider the Lobster” examines the pain that Lobsters feel when they are being boiled alive to be consumed by Humans. He uses the lobster as an example to expand his examination, bringing out the relationship between humans and the animals that we consume.

Wallace starts of his essay by mentioning the Maine Lobster Festival and its huge crowd of over 80,000 people that consume over 25,000 pounds of lobster during the 5 days that the festival lasts. He starts off the essay with admiration in his tone as he describes the Maine Lobster Festival to his readers. After he’s done praising the festival, Wallace reveals that his main intention of writing the essay was to question if killing animals is morally acceptable. He explains that Lobsters have nociceptors, invertebrate versions of the prostaglandins and major neurotransmitters that enable human beings to record pain. Lobsters, however, do not appear to be able to absorb natural opioids like endorphins and enkephalins which are what advanced nervous systems use to deal with pain. Wallace examines this information about lobsters and recognizes that lobster either suffer more than a human would because they can’t control pain as well as humans can or they simply can’t comprehend the idea of pain. Wallace sympathizes that if lobsters can’t control their pain, then humans are unnecessarily boiling and eating them, as a result, putting them through immense suffering that humans wouldn’t want to experience themselves. Wallace, however also compares them to frontal lobotomy patients. These patients experience physical pain but perceive it in a different way. They do not necessarily hate or like pain. They feel neutral about it. As if the idea of pain doesn’t exist to them. While some would argue that if lobsters feel neutrally towards pain, they probably would think nothing of being boiled, Wallace states that as a lobster is...

Rhetorical Analysis of “Consider the Lobster”
When I first read the title of this story my mind went in all directions as to what it could be about, besides the obvious, lobsters. Wallace starts off his article by telling all of us what there is to expect from the MLF (Main Lobster Festival.) He goes into details about what kinds of events will take place that weekend, different type of lobsters that are served and where you can find them all and he also goes into details about utensils used, extra expenses there are and lastly about how the community around thinks of all this. With this start to his article you think you are going to only be reading about this festival and what it all entails, almost like it is an advertisement to get people to show up.
Instead, Wallace’s purpose for his article was to get people to think about the lobsters, what they have to go through for everyone to be able to attend this festival. He talks about how they are caught, killed/prepared, and finally served to the crowd. He has a whole section just talking about how you prepare the lobster, “however stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the containers sides or even to hook its claws over the kettles rim like a person trying to keep form going over the edge of a roof.” (Wallace 245) With that quote he is trying to compare how us humans would feel being put into boiling water just like these lobsters have to do. He talks about how there are studies out there debating whether the lobsters feel pain or not, he never gives you an exact answer.
Throughout his whole article Wallace focuses on making everyone “Consider the Lobster,” with that he also mentions that he isn’t trying to turn people into PETA members or make them think the way he does, he just wants everyone to be aware. Wallace sticks to one side throughout his article rather than touching on both matters. I think he is using his article to be persuasive with everyone, but at the same time not be demanding that they jump on board with him.

Rhetorical Analysis of ‘Consider the Lobster’ – David Foster Wallace

Posted by: nicolemunnelly on: March 3, 2010 • In: Uncategorized • Leave a Comment
I see Wallace’s purpose for his text ‘Consider the Lobster’ is to show/question the idea and the purpose of the MLF and discuss it’s relevance in a potential or already violation to animal rights. I feel Wallace wants us to see both sides of the controversy between gourmet food lovers and animal rights activists and maybe even to reason with both arguments for and against to some extent.
Wallace’s audience is vary broad. He is writing this article for gourmet food eaters, and chefs, scientists, animal rights activists and for the general public. Wallace asks questions to get us to interpret an answer for ourselves.
‘Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and it’s overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?’ – (Wallace; pg 247 First Year Composition Reader)
These questions make us readers think deeply about what Wallace has been saying throughout the article and encourages us to think of our own…not answers but more so thoughts. Wallace structured the above questions to be located at the end of the article to leave us with a lasting wonder to the issues of the entire text.
Something that stood out to me was Wallace’s visual image of the lobster being cooked alive in the boiling water. This image seemed very clear to me like I was going through the exact process of cooking a gourmet lobster meal. I found it very disturbing and from then on I disagreed with the idea of cooking lobsters alive..and to some extent cooking lobster altogether.
‘The lobster will sometimes cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof.(..)you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it trashes around.’ – (Wallace; Pg 245 First Year Composition Reader)
The above image is awful however, the continuous arguments presented that lobsters cannot feel pain are somewhat convincing as well. I don’t know if lobsters can feel pain…but the fact that their reaction to the boiling water seems they certainly can is a another argument. Wallace’s representation of the double-sided arguments of the pain factor to the lobsters is effective in making us see both sides to the gourmet eaters, chefs and the entire concept of the MLF against the animal rights activists as it continually makes me wonder if they can feel it or not? Maybe they can’t..maybe they can just sense the different in water temperature and just really dislike this…
‘Lobster’s, however, are known to exhibit preferences. Experiments have shown that they can detect changes of only a degree or two in water temperature; one reason for their complex migratory cycles (…) is to pursue the temperatures they like best’. – (Wallace; Pg 247 First Year Composition Reader)
Another thing I like about Wallace’s article is that he states his opinion and viewpoint of the issues discussed at the end, we get the author’s personal thoughts but throughout the article he remains non bias to keep an open-mined flow to the ideas presented.