Summary Of Consider The Lobster

David Foster Wallace is known for his work in countless articles including “Big Red Son”, “F/X Porn” and “Federer as a Religious Experience”. He covers very bold topics such as self castration, government defying conspiracies and godly athletes. In his work titled “Consider the Lobster” which is about the Main Lobster Festival, and how they boil thousands of lobsters in a giant pot for all the attendees. Wallace effectively proves his thesis of that people should consider the animal they are consuming, not stop eating it all together, but simply consider it.

Wallace begins building his credibility by explaining what the Maine Lobster Festival is and how it became a New England tourist attraction. He states that “suppers come in styrofoam plates,

He says that “pain is a totally subjective mental experience, we do not have direct access to anyone or anything’s pain but our own” (6). This is true because, not a single person can tell what kind of pain another is going through, everything has a different pain tolerance. Wallace uses a moral equivalence fallacy when he says “imagine a Nebraska Beef Festival at which part of the festivities is watching trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and slaughtered right there on the World’s Largest Killin Floor or something” (5). He is comparing the giant pot in which all the lobsters are cooked in, which causes no public disturbance, to something visually brutal that would cause a lot of commotion. He also uses the Straw Man fallacy when talking about how his rental-car guy says that lobsters don’t feel any sort of pain. Wallace says that “Besides the fact that it’s incorrect in about 11 different ways” (3). When in fact there is not even close to 11 different ways that the car guy is wrong there’s only one; they could in fact feel pain. Wallace claims that “There is, after all, a difference between (1) pain as a purely neurological event, and (2) actual suffering, which seems crucially to involve an emotional component, an awareness of pain as unpleasant, as something to fear/dislike/want to avoid” (6). He says this because we humans do not know which form of pain the lobsters feel therefore

He begins by talking about how to cook them making the reader hungry and want to eat lobster but then hits them with the statement “each lobster is suppose to be alive when you cook it” (3). Making the reader’s mind start to wander. He says “the animal’s claws are pegged or banded together to keep the, from tearing one another up under the stresses of captivity” (4). Also “Most of us have been at supermarkets or restaurants that feature tanks of live lobster, from which you can pick out your supper while it watches you point. This starts making the reader feel as if the lobster knows exactly what you’re about to do to it, causing a sense of sadness or guilt to the reader. Wallace states that the guilt you feel is because “you do it yourself- or at least it’s done specifically for you, on-site” (5). Also “the intimacy of the whole thing is maximized at home” (5). The thought of an animal dying only for your needs is saddening to a lot of people. Wallace continues and talks about the reaction the lobsters have to being boiled alive such as, “If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to 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” (5). What’s even more graphic is “when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually