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David Wallace's Essay 'Consider The Lobster'

186 Words1 Pages
I thought David Wallace did a good job writing "Consider the Lobster". It was an effective essay. Before jumping to the Lobsters, he started his essay by introducing g a well-marketed Maine Lobsters Festival (MLF) which is held every late July. I like how he describe what he saw at the Festival, give g his readers a sense of what to visualize. I find if interesting that in the 1800s, lobsters was a low-class food eaten by the poor and also was a punishment for prisoners. Now, Lobsters are fancy and expensive. David tells his readers that there are several ways to cook a lobster. After, he informed us that the lobsters are alive before being boiled and also doesn't feel pain. David uses sensory details when describing the boiling of a lobster.
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His findings on how a lobster can sense the changes in temperature of water by even just a few degrees clearly refute the prior claims that lobsters have no brain, or feel any pain. Pathos, our appeal to emotion is analogized very well when he describes the lobster clawing to the edge of the pot and compares it to much like a human, hanging onto the edge of a roof for dear life. An exceptional job is done by the writer in humanizing the lobster and getting the reader on his side. There is a great appeal to the morality behind boiling the lobster and Wallace relates to the reader himself by professing how uneasy he is with the idea of animal cruelty and how he and no one else likes to think about it. This is a sentiment most people can very easily associate with, this underlying thought that most of us enjoy consuming meat, but also have a liberal attitude regarding animal cruelty.

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Essayist, David Foster Wallace, article “Consider the Lobster” discusses the deeper issue at hand found in the Maine Lobster Festival (2003) that attendees often overlook at or do not care; whether it is morally right to subject pain on animals because of gourmet delicacies. With this intention in mind, Wallace must wangle his point across readers of Gourmet magazine, his attended audience, in order for them to understand that the Maine Lobster Festival is not just about "the promise of sun, fun, and fine food" But a deeper issue at hand. Therefore, Wallace use of the rhetorical strategy Pathos throughout his essay creates an emotional impact on his readers; who have probably never consider the lobsters’ point of view. Consequently, allowing

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