Essays on Consider The Lobster

The very title of the essay appeals to the audience and alerts them to some extent, as Wallace uses the imperative construction to draw his readers’ attention. He doesn’t want only to explain his readers the matter from different points of view, but also to make them regard it in details and come to their own conclusions. “Consider the Lobster” is addressed to different kinds of audience: to tourists who are eager to visit the Maine Lobster Festival, to sea world scientists who are seeking answers to the questions of lobsters’ existence and survival, to seafood lovers who ...

Human and animal rights are issues that should be of concern to every citizen. For most persons, animal rights are a topic that is not worth much debate. But, animals can be hurt by the cruel hands of mankind and their need to satisfy their hunger and social desires. Instead, mankind is more concerned with human rights even though animals and humans are treated with similar levels of cruelty in the society. Persons are beaten and killed and the society defends the right to life and the right to be free from abuse, yet some persons continue to believe ...

English

Consider the Lobster is a topic initially looks like an environmental issue that is being covered by the media as it slowly progresses into an exhaustive and interesting article that captivates the interests of the readers very quickly. The audience of Wallace, especially for this particular piece of writing is rather exhaustive as the people addressed are gourmet food lovers, food scientists, animal activists, social activists, as well as chefs. ‘Consider the Lobster’ is an article in which Wallace brings up a topic the need for morality and humanity with respect to animal abuse. Similar to the minorities dwelling ...

How can daily life be led so that just decisions are made, opening up the way to an ethical life?

The aim of this essay is to present you with some ideas on how an ethics system could be built and organized in such a way that just decisions are made on an everyday basis in people’s lives. Ethics is considered to be a vague and difficult to be defined concept. Nevertheless, there has always been the commonly accepted primitive idea on what Ethics is, which is mainly based on the principles of Philosophy. ...

In the article entitled “Consider the Lobster” written by David Foster Wallace, the author attempts to explore the ethical and moral issues pertaining killing lobsters prior to consumption. Wallace used a personal and reflective style that is deemed to be effective in enticing appeal to the target audience. From the writing style, the author was effective in applying rhetorical elements to present the intended message. The rhetorical element of logos, or logical appeal, was applied through the provision of facts, background overview, and scientific details regarding the lobster. Wallace initially asserted the rationale for the lobster’s evolving popularity ...

Summary

In the article Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace is quick to vividly describe how inhuman human beings are. He makes use of lobsters as an example and more specifically the Marine Lobster Fest which is a popular festival in which large quantities of lobsters are consumed. David begins by introducing the culture and tradition of the festival and then vividly describing the large number of lobsters available. He estimates the lobsters to be about twenty five thousand pounds, fresh and ready for human consumption. In the subsequent part of the article, he describes in detail how the lobsters are ...

David Foster Wallace, in his essay Consider the Lobster, questions the ethics of being a non vegetarian consumer and whether it is morally alright to kill an animal for food. The essay addresses the Maine Lobster Festival (known as MFL) where lobsters are abundant in supply. While covering this story Wallace was faced with certain issues of morality towards killing of animals. In this paper I will discuss Wallace’s concerns, in addition to which I will give my response to the issue. Wallace begins the essay by introducing the MFL of 2003 where he describes how it is a ...

“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.” –Albert Camus. An individual who does not consider ethics is a dangerous human being to the society. Ethics offer the rules of engagement among the members of the society. In a just ethical system, an individual should be awarded for what he has accomplished and worked for, instead of being credited for external factors, which alters the status of the individual by giving a head start. To understand the just ethical system, it is worth considering the articles by Namit Arora and David F. Wallace. The articles, “What do ...

Torture is an act of deliberately imposing ruthless physical pain on an individual who is under arrest or physically restrained and is unable to protect himself or herself against the pain being inflicted. This paper is going to synthesize Christopher Hitchens’ essay titled , “Believe me, it is torture” and David Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster”. It is not an easy task to judge Hitchens’ point of view of categorizing water-boarding as inflicting physical pain and the underlying contention on the fact that no human being should be subjected to torture (Hitchens 3). I am in support of this ...

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 ...

An Analysis

Ostensibly a travel piece for ‘Gourmet’ magazine, ‘Consider the Lobster’ begins as a critical and sardonic description about the commercialization of festival tourism. It eventually develops into a moral reflection on the ethics of animal suffering. The slow development of his argument is one of Wallace’s key strategies. It is bookended by misanthropic sentiment, from hyperbolic complaints about traffic (Wallace, 1) to sardonic remarks in his closing paragraph about the inability of “public discussion” to solve the moral dilemmas he raises. (7).Through a variety of techniques, Wallace presents an argument that is cogent, lacking in dogma and reaches only tentative conclusions. ...