David Foster Wallace Consider The Lobster Analysis

Imagine being boiled alive like lobsters, “scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around” (Wallace 62). David Foster Wallace doesn’t hold back with his use of details and imagery as he engages the audience describing the Maine Lobster Festival in his article “Consider the Lobster”, which is published in Gourmet Magazine. Wallace uses the title, “Consider the Lobster” not just as the title but as his thesis. He wants to get the reader to think constantly throughout the article about the morality of eating a lobster. Wallace uses rhetoric to describe what occurs at the Maine Lobster Festival as well as the ethics of lobster eating and he does this in his article effectively.
Wallace provides significant evidence to prove that he is knowledgeable and credible about the Maine Lobster Festival. He starts the article, “Consider the Lobster” by providing facts about the Maine Lobster Festival. Wallace first describes the region of Maine where the MLF is held annually (Wallace 50). Wallace then goes on to describe the festival in general including the many attractions held there, the attendance of 80,000 people and the 25,000 pounds of lobsters caught just for the festival (Wallace 50). This is effective in his writing

Wallace states “Up until sometime in the 1800s, lobster was literally low-class food, eaten only by the poor and industrialized.” (Wallace 55). Wallace goes on one step further and compares lobsters to rats. (Wallace 56). Wallace does this by saying “Even in the harsh penal environment of early America, some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats.” (Wallace 55). Wallace informs the reader of the history of lobsters and again puts a vivid illustration in the readers head, leaving the reader contemplating if they truly want to eat a lobster and the morality of eating