According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average American in 2012 ate 71.2 pounds of red meat and 54.1 pounds of poultry (factoring out the percent of our population who are vegetarians), an enormous amount which is actually less than what it was at its peak in 2004. 95% of Americans eat meat each and every day. It’s more than likely that the vast majority don’t sit down at their dinner tables and think about the animal whose life had to end in order for them to enjoy their meal. Nor does one think about all the inhumane things that these animals we as carnivores consume on a daily basis. Has the average American ever even thought about what an animal goes through and how inhumane it really is? Through the use of questions along with imagery and point of view, David Foster Wallace makes his readers both aware that they should be asking questions like this and provides them with answers in his essay “Consider the Lobster.” Beginning in paragraph 14 in David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster”, we see Wallace’s main point that we should at the very least “Consider the Lobster”, meaning we should realize how inhumane the brutal acts we commit upon lobsters are. In our society, there are limits to the punishments we can put prisoners through, and if a punishment is deemed “cruel or unusual”, then it is illegal and no longer practiced. If we limit the methods of punishment we use on prisoners, then the same system should be put in place for innocent lobsters, because it’s simply preposterous to think that being boiled alive doesn’t constitute as cruel and unusual. Wallace accomplishes this through the use of questions, along with his use of imagery and point of view. This topic in general is something that should be important to everyone because 95% of Americans eat meat every day, so we are all responsible if it is indeed decided based on our own conscience that the torture we put animals through is inhumane.

Wallace introduces his attempt to persuade his readers into thinking from an animal’s perspective in paragraph 14, where he asks his first set of questions, which he claims his “unavoidable”, which opened with “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive for our gustatory pleasure?” (Wallace 60). He followed this with asking, “What does ‘all right’ even mean? Is it just a matter of individual choice?” (60). Through Wallace’s style of writing, he doesn’t necessarily give us a definitive answer, instead he allows for us to ponder the question and reflect on our past life experiences in order to come up with the answer. Therefore, in effect, the answer to the question regarding whether it being “all right” to boil a lobster, would depend on your own personal experiences and opinions. For example, if you were a vegetarian, it’d be more than reasonable to infer you’d believe it is not all right. The same would go for someone who is a member of an organization like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA. After Wallace gives his readers a few paragraphs to ponder their answers this difficult yet seemingly unavoidable question before providing us with an answer to this question from one of the cab drivers in a town in Maine who is host to a lobster festival that the readers were introduced to in Wallace’s introduction. The cab driver claims that the most critical factor that proves it is in no way inhumane to boil a lobster alive for our food is “’There’s a part of the brain in people and animals that let us feel pain, and lobsters’ brains don’t have this part.”’ (60). Now to the average reader without prior knowledge of this topic, the initial reaction to this would be relief that we haven’t put animals such as lobsters through torture, yet Wallace quickly explains to us that this claim is in no way true. The truly horrifying part of this claim is that it’s echoed by the program of the lobster festival, which is seemingly unjust to pass off information to an audience without scientific truth. This claim is quickly dismissed by Wallace through discussion of the workings of both the human brain and the brain of a lobster. Wallace’s use of introducing questions at the beginning of the passage and allowing us to come up with our own answers to these questions then later supplying us with facts allow for his readers to become educated on the topic, which in effect accomplishes the ultimate goal of Wallace’s writing.

Perhaps Wallace’s main point got across most effectively through his use of literary terms such as point of view and imagery. Using these terms, he takes his readers through many of the ways lobsters are killed through cooking, more specifically how it’s done in our own homes, the most common and effective method. In this, Wallace describes the usual scenario of bringing a lobster home from the grocery store and boiling it in a boiling hot pot, a practice that is assumingly something Wallace’s intended audience can relate to. The most serious use of imagery from Wallace comes when he describes the reaction the lobster has, “…the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a cliff” (Wallace 62). The use of imagery of the lobster’s misguided attempt to save itself from inevitable demise and the personification that came along with it with the metaphor of the person trying to keep from going of the edge of the cliff effectively embodies the fear a lobster must be feeling as it is heading into the boiling water. Wallace continues this theme as he describes a lobster’s actions once it is fully immersed in boiling water, when he states, “The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water” (Wallace 62). He then continues with” …the lobster acts as if it’s in terrible pain, causing some cooks to leave the kitchen altogether” (Wallace 63). This not only forces the reader to think about the lobster and what it’s going through, but also recognizes that if it causes some cooks to leave the room of a boiling lobster because of the acknowledgment of pain that the lobster is going through, that it must be inhumane. 

In “Consider the Lobster”, David Foster Wallace took an ordinary lobster festival and transformed it into a conversation with his readers about the morality of the arguably inhumane acts we commit upon lobsters. This is accomplished through his use of rhetorical questions that provoke thought from his readers, along with imagery that and point of view. Through his writing, each one of his readers should realize that in no way is the harsh cooking of lobsters humane, and something should be done to change this. The goal of Wallace’s work was not only to provoke thought, but to potentially call for a movement. Wallace isn’t asking his readers or humans in general to stop eating lobsters, all he asks is to consider the lobster’s basic rights as a living organism.
