Similarities Between Letter From Birmingham Jail And Consider The Lobster

Mitchell McCauley

Mr. Rogers

Writing 121,

2/2/2017

The Science of Persuasion

The similarities between “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. and “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace, at first seem to be minute, but when you delve deeper into these essays, they appear to be quite comparable. In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” King addresses the unequal status of being an African American. Whereas, Wallace introduced the controversial morality of causing pain to a lobster, while distracting his audience with extra information. King gains sympathy for the African-American in the segregated South aided by his use of ethical and logical appeal. Wallace uses his well-rounded pathetic and logical appeal to make the audience

Wallace, an American English professor, and author; attended the Maine Lobster Festival, which had 25,000 pounds of lobster, carnival rides, children with poor motor skills, cooking competitions, and a beauty pageant. Nonetheless, Wallace sees through all of the lobster paraphernalia and crafty advertising; and questions “Is it right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?”(pg62). At the same time, Wallace never really answers this question himself, and the reader soon realizes he never will. The entire passage he provides the information and allows the reader to draw their own conclusion, which creates. For example, while Wallace is at the Maine Lobster Festival he takes a test called “Lobster IQ quiz”. It said that a lobster’s nervous system is quite simple and it is ill-equipped to feel pain; however, Wallace explains that the claim is “incorrect in about nine different ways”(pg60). He convinces the reader by first of all displaying the information in an easy to read and unbiased way. Wallace then explains the anatomy of a lobster and shows the reader that lobsters have a centralized nervous system. Then, he uses a mixture of logical and pathetic appeal to demonstrate that lobster’s can sense the scorching hot water, by saying “Lobsters have pain receptors sensitive to potentially damaging extremes of temperature,”(pg63). While saying that, he reports the “struggling, thrashing, and lid-clattering” which occurs when the lobsters’ are in a boiling kettle, Wallace asserts that due to the lobsters’ behavior and neurological build-up show that a lobster can perceive pain, by saying that a lobster’s action show a preference to not get boiled alive, and this preference leads to the lobster suffering. Another way he persuades the audience is he proves