Consider the Lobster

I enjoyed reading Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace. The first half of the paper talks about the Maine Lobster Festival and then basically the history of the consumption of lobster. The author has great voice in this paper and has some very interesting points in the first half of his work. The fact that in early 1800’s settlers could walk out to sea and catch all they could eat lobster really intrigued me. I also enjoyed the reference to jails not serving lobster since it was thought of as the rats of the sea. After about seven pages the author builds to his question of “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” He makes this question to make us think about what we are doing. Boiling lobster alive has never really occurred to me as a cruel thing to do. This question really made think. Wallace then talks about stories from a rental car guy named Dick. He told of the time that a PETA protester striped down and painted herself as a lobster to make a point. Dick ends his stories with “There’s a part of the brain in people and animals that lets us feel pain, and lobsters’ brains don’t have this part.” This part is complicated. He cites a MLF articles that states that lobsters nervous systems are like grasshoppers and very underdeveloped. There is no way for us to know if lobster feel pain but they spend 35-45 seconds in boiling water before they die. The Author makes the topic uncomfortable at this point by talking about the ways to kill lobsters. Wallace makes us rethink our ways of eating lobster.