David Foster Wallace's Essay 'Consider The Lobster'
Have you ever thought about how the food you’re about to eat was prepared? I know I rarely do, and many of us never pay any mind to what exactly is on our plate. David Foster Wallace’s essay will almost definitely make you ask yourself a few questions regarding meat consumption. His piece talks about the controversy behind killing lobsters and questions people’s general views on that matter, making his audience think about morality. After reading “Consider the Lobster” I couldn’t help but think how ridiculous it is to state that lobsters don’t feel pain, and even more ridiculous to use such statement in order to make people think that they’re not actually hurting the lobsters. It’s said that lobsters’ brains don’t let them feel pain, and that’s what makes the killing of them okay for a lot of people (308). I believe that every creature is capable of experiencing at least some sort of physical discomfort. I don’t know about insects, but all animals seem to feel pain just as we, humans, do. To me, the best proof that lobsters do actually feel pain is the author’s argument that they behave “very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water”(310, Wallace). People notice the lobster’s panicky reaction to being thrown into the extremely hot kettle and
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To me, it seems like such process only makes the animal’s suffering worse and as the author says: “lobsters boiled incrementally often display a whole bonus set of gruesome, convulsionlike reactions thats you don’t see in regular boiling”(311). Wallace also talks about cooks who poke wholes in the lobsters and then microwave them alive or tear off the claws and tail. It makes me wonder: are those cooks cruel people? Or just people who have to do their jobs? If they’re just doing their jobs however, how could they not want to try and do it as least painfully as possible? It’s very hard for me to understand how could someone be capable of microwaving an animal alive. And it’s dreadful to
To me, it seems like such process only makes the animal’s suffering worse and as the author says: “lobsters boiled incrementally often display a whole bonus set of gruesome, convulsionlike reactions thats you don’t see in regular boiling”(311). Wallace also talks about cooks who poke wholes in the lobsters and then microwave them alive or tear off the claws and tail. It makes me wonder: are those cooks cruel people? Or just people who have to do their jobs? If they’re just doing their jobs however, how could they not want to try and do it as least painfully as possible? It’s very hard for me to understand how could someone be capable of microwaving an animal alive. And it’s dreadful to