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Consider The Lobster By David Foster Wallace Summary

686 Words3 Pages

Abiral Mainali
Elliot Kaiser
ENG 101-I3
10/11/2017
Lobster do feel pain
The article Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace is an excellent article because the author is considering the pain of the lobster and he is trying to show the pain it experiences. Lots of festivals are held every year in which people celebrate by having lobster as main food. Lobsters are brought fresh and then are killed alive by keeping them in boiling water or in hot vessels. This has been a part of culture now. People have been enjoying this from decades. The author has argued that lobsters, that were considered as a very low-class food back in the decade, are now one of the major dishes in the American society. The writer tries to persuade the audience that …show more content…

He opens this reading by discussing the Maine Lobster Festival where over 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught lobster are consumed each year and continues with Maine’s lobster industry. Wallace advances by defining the word lobster and points out that lobsters are basically giant sea-insects. He also goes on to explain the history of the lobster, describing how up until the early 1800s lobster was a low-class food that was only eaten by the poor and institutionalized and discusses how now a days lobster is seen as a delicacy or even posh. The paper then takes a turn when Wallace begins to question the ethical background of boiling lobsters alive. Wallace brings up many points that are made on both sides of this moral battle, discussing how some say that because a lobster doesn’t have a cerebral cortex it doesn’t feel pain. He then goes on to prove that wrong by discussing how lobsters exhibit preference and graphically paints the picture of what exactly happens when you boil a lobster alive, speaking on the way lobsters attempt to escape the boiling water as you or I would do. For the remainder of this writing Wallace just continues to discuss the ethics behind eating lobster. He ends the paper on a very discomforting note finishing off by just saying that it’s best to stop the public discussion there, pointing out that there are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each

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The author also said lobsters require no cleaning or plucking, but are relatively easy for sellers to keep alive. Wallace then begins to question if it is right for lobsters to be boiled just for human tasting pleasure. He then said his own opinion that lobsters are extremely sensitive and shouldn’t be eaten. Wallace also discusses how some people say that because lobster have no cerebral cortex-the area of the brain that gives the experience of pain, they feel no

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