In David Foster Wallace’s seminal nonfiction essay “Consider the Lobster,” the noted author reports for a culinary magazine his experiences at the 2004 Maine Lobster Festival. According to Wallace, “The Maine Lobster Festival represents less an intersection of the [tourism and lobster] industries than a deliberate collision, joyful and lucrative and loud” (Wallace). From basic descriptions of the etymology and history of the lobster and the event itself, Wallace moves on to even stickier metaphysical questions as to the nature of this ritualistic delicacy, even approaching moral questions as to the ethics of cooking and killing lobster. While a consensus is not necessarily overtly reached, Wallace’s approach absolutely seems to be one of opposition to the practice.
Wallace never really seems to want to be there in the first place, which is evidenced by his constant referral to the story as one he was “assigned”; by repeating this point, Wallace wishes to inform the audience that he has no special passion for what happens here. Furthermore, despite his surface interest in the food and traditions of the festival, he quickly grows weary of the typical nebbishness of the other patrons, and finds its meal hardly elevates it beyond its real context: “What the Maine Lobster Festival really is is a midlevel county fair with a culinary hook” (Wallace). Much of this early part of the essay is pure facts about how one cooks lobster, their species names, what type of creature it is, and what else is served at the MLF. This is relayed to the audience in a perfunctory way, as if to provide context for the latter section of the work where the author’s real questions come into play.
One of the most important distinctions Wallace makes in his essay is the question of whether or not it is immoral or unethical to cook lobsters live – the preferred method of preparation for things like the MLF, which has a huge vat they can cook 100 live lobsters in at a time. Asks Wallace, “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” (Wallace) This question is interestingly tied to the earlier noting by Wallace that lobsters were considered peasant food because of their abundance in earlier European history; it is the shift in perception to lobsters being a rare delicacy that has raised its popularity and led such questions to be put in the spotlight by groups like PETA. Wallace depicts the relationship between the MLF and PETA as one of begrudging acceptance – they both conduct their own business, but no side really budges despite the other’s efforts. PETA continues to protest, and the MLF continues unabated (even though Wallace implies that it is no longer a real cultural institution but instead a marketing gimmick for local sponsors). The intense care Wallace has for the moral implications of corporate and societal apathy is one of the central arguments of the essay, however subtle it may be.
Much of the essay is dedicated to the aforementioned question of whether or not lobsters can feel pain, and therefore should not be killed so violently: “The fact that even the most highly evolved nonhuman mammals can’t use language to communicate with us about their subjective mental experience is only the first player of additional complication in trying to extend our reasoning about pain and morality to animals” (Wallace). Wallace explores a wide variety of arguments about the issue of lobsters feeling pain, including the different approaches cooks take to disable the lobster – which he argues doesn’t work, but permits a measure of agency toward the killing of the animal. Exploring this complex relationship between ourselves and what we eat, Wallace’s essay forces us to ask some hard questions about our treatment of the animals that become our food.
Wallace’s questioning of the issue is touchy, as he is fully aware: “the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling” (Wallace). This touches on the real reason we do not often think of this complex moral issue; we simply want to push it out of our minds in order to allow ourselves to feel okay about the foods we eat and enjoy. The sketchy definition of lobster-felt pain is one almost borne of ignorance, according to Wallace, and yet there is still so little we understand as to the lobster’s reception to pain: “here is, after all, a difference between (1) pain as a purely neurological event, and (2) actual suffering, which seems crucially to involve an emotional component, an awareness of pain as unpleasant, as something to fear/dislike/want to avoid” (Wallace).
In the end, however, Wallace defaults to a purely instinctual position, which is not unfair given the subject of our comfort with the way our lobster is prepared: “Standing at the stove, it is hard to deny in any meaningful way that this is a living creature experiencing pain and wishing to avoid/escape the painful experience” (Wallace). The way we cook lobster forces us to confront our culpability in killing an animal for our supper in a way we rarely experience in an industrialized society – we no longer have to kill our food to get it, except for the ritualistic boiling of lobster that is part of the culinary experience. Despite these questions as to how the lobsters interact with pain, Wallace places upon the reader a moral imperative: “Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping to inflict it by paying for the food it results in?” (Wallace)
In conclusion, David Foster Wallace’s essay “Consider the Lobster” is a fascinating look at the mindset of cuisine from someone outside its circles, touching on everything from the soullessness of a corporate lobster-eating event, to the apathetic relationship a town has with it and its protestors, to the issue of the lobster’s own agency and feeling itself. One of his final queries (which he admits is inconclusive, but the questions are begged anyway) challenges the conceit that all of his concerns are needless and overly probing: “Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)?” (Wallace). This final question brings it back home to the audience of the essay, and validates the issue of animal cruelty that Wallace brings up – by not thinking about the questions, we are not ‘overthinking it,’ but merely avoiding acknowledgement of the consequences of our actions.
References
Wallace, D.F. (August 2004). “Consider the Lobster.” Gourmet.
