Marin Gibson
Ms. Park
Senior Composition
Period 2
1/16/13

The Ethos of David Foster Wallace in; “Consider the Lobster”

The ethos of David Foster Wallace in the article “Consider the Lobster,” was shown through his connection of lobster’s to human’s. Instead of simply stating lobsters in fact feel pain when being boiled alive, he makes the lobster’s emotions into human ones, making the issue more relatable to readers. He shows human emotions such as stress when,” …the animals claws are pegged or banded to keep them from tearing one another up under the stress of captivity”(Wallace 4). Any and every human can relate to stressful situations and Wallace is very smart to put lobster’s stress’ of being captive into human’s emotional perspective. Instead of saying lobster’s claws are tied to keep them from harming each other, he shows that they are in fact very stressed due to being in captivity which catches the readers attention to the inhumanitites of lobster captivity, and readers can relate to this. Wallace is knowledeble for taking this approach to the reader’s emotions, and readers will believe he is knowledgeable because the lobster’s anguish is now understandable and put into perspective. Wallace however does admit that, “…pain is a totally subjective mental experience [and] we do not have direct access to anyone or anything’s pain but our own”(Wallace 6). In other words, Wallace calls for the reader to fill in how they would personally feel if they were to be in the lobster’s position. By only knowing our own human emotion, readers can agree that being boiled alive would be quite an unpleasant experience. Wallace shows ethos in this article by putting the lobster’s emotion into perspective of human’s which makes his point easily understood, and in turn makes him sound very