“Consider The Lobster” is a short story written by David Foster Wallace that explores the act of murdering lobsters in both restaurants and at home. Wallace believes that humans should question what they are doing before they partake in an action because the way that lobsters are killed is quite cruel. To catch the attention of his readers, Wallace uses vivid imagery when describing how some choose to kill their lobsters. Aside from the typical “plunge” (6) into boiling water, he states that some cooks like to “drive a sharp heavy knife point-first into a spot just above the midpoint between the lobster’s eyestalks” (6). Although it is a gruesome statement, it is clearly seen by anyone who is reading and it is easy to imagine how awful that would feel. Wallace also uses strong imagery when he talks about the lobsters at the Festival. In order to express how miserable the lobsters are, he says that they “pile over one another, wave their hobbled claws impotently, huddle in the rear corners, or scrabble frantically back from the glass as you approach” (7). Just …show more content…
Wallace sets the scene of his paper at “the enormous, pungent, and extremely well marketed Maine Lobster Festival”. It is at that gathering that he does a lot of his observation. He hints to his audience that that is where he found his desire to speak up for the lobsters. Wallace then did an extreme amount of intense research on the topics so that he could explain that “a lobster is a marine crustacean of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincherish claws used for subduing prey” (2). Wallace goes on to explain that lobster has not always been a delicacy and in fact it was one of the cheapest proteins available for purchase. Overall, Wallace is very familiar with the topic because he has observed lobsters at the annual fair and he has done an abundance of