Consider the Lobster

Wallace began his essay, “Consider the Lobster,” with an easygoing anecdote about his trip to a food festival revolving around lobsters. With the story early on, we all know that the subject of the essay will be on lobsters. Eventually, he shifts from the festivals and focuses solely on lobsters and the way that they’re treated. He begins first and starts off by saying that before lobsters were a luxury food, it was actually for the poor and only those with little money ate lobster. Because this essay was featured in a culinary magazine, the readers were not expecting the type of turn he was going to take once Wallace got about halfway into the essay. He then began the subject of animal cruelty, and the processes the chefs take to kill lobsters. Wallace made sure to be as explicit as possible, without leaving out details. Seemingly without warning, readers are delved into the crazy amount of rhetorical questions that will later then result into of responses from readers. Wallace’s detailing of the various ways in which lobsters are euphemistically “prepared” for cooking — e.g., “Some cooks’ practice is to drive a sharp heavy knife point-first into a spot just above the midpoint between the lobster’s eyestalks” requires the readers to discuss behaviors associated with pain and suffering, but also to make them  wonder why they would eat things not knowing the process of something before you eat it. Personally, reading something as graphic as this was difficult to read, it did upset me and grossed me out reading this. I don’t ever eat lobster, but this lobster story is just one example of the many different terrible treatments done to animals that are regularly eaten. It sparks a sense of guilt because although I know that they are being killed every day, I still eat meat and know that it’s wrong to, but I don’t stop. I assume that is the effect that Wallace wants from the readers, and it worked on me. It must have worked on the majority of the readers because so many people complained about this essay being in Gourmet because it was not “what they signed up for.” 

The title of this text is main claim, to literally consider the lobster. Wallace makes endless points on the suffering behind cooking a lobster. He questions “what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh bases viands?” Wallace points out that experiments have been shown that lobsters can detect changes of only a degree or two in water temperature. He also graphically discusses the process of boiling a lobster, “The lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook it’s claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof… Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off.” 

I feel very strongly about this reading, as an animal rights activist and have been contemplating on whether I should become a vegetarian, I respect Wallace a lot for bringing to light such a devastating topic that needs to be talked about. I thought that many parts of this essay were extremely hard to read but were very important.