Lobsters Boiling In Water

In “Consider the Lobster”, an essay published in August of 2004, David Foster Wallace argues that torturing and killing animals for humanistic pleasure is unethical and inhumane. Throughout the essay, Wallace utilizes rhetorical devices and draws emotion from the audience to support his central claim. Wallace describes the history of lobsters, the Maine Lobster Festival, and how lobsters are cooked and killed in order to raise awareness on the inhumanity in how lobsters and animals in general are treated. Wallace effectively supports his argument by establishing pathos and providing context on the cruel methods in which lobsters are baited and eventually cooked, gaining support for his thesis. Rhetorical Devices •

In his article “Consider the Lobster”, David Foster Wallace uses the Maine Lobster Festival as a medium for his argument regarding the ethics of eating lobster. Wallace frames his article as a conversation just to get people thinking, but a deeper look at his rhetoric shows that he is arguing against the inhumanities of eating lobster, while doing everything he can to avoid sounding like he is taking a stance.

The short story “What, of this goldfish, Would You Wish?’ is a emotive short story

Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp is an essay written by Joy Williams, about the overwhelming complacency that todays culture shows towards nature.Williams argues in a very satirical way, that todays culture has all but completely lost touch with what nature really is, and that unless we as a nation change our morals regarding the role that nature plays in human existence, we may very well be witnessing the dawn of our own destruction.

Wallace’s use of changing viewpoints adds to what he originally wants to do, which is to give the reader a chance to pick which side of the argument they want to be on. The author not only gives the reader different views, but he also changes his tone throughout the piece. By adding dynamic shifts in his writing, he includes the reader and gives a better feel for what this article is really about. This sentence stands out due to the fact that Wallace talks about the positive aspects of what occurs during the festival throughout the beginning of the article. This includes not only the amount of lobster that is being

By inducing the readership to ponder the agony of the lobster they see the inhumanity in their actions; even though the average lobster consumer usually doesn't boil their own lobster they can now see how they are still equally responsible for the lobster’s sufferung. Additionally, the readers are left to consider “...is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental…”(Wallace 60). In the above question Wallace essentially asks if we care about the lobster condition out of politically correctness and a sense of self-righteousness or do we care because it is the noble course to take. Evaluating the source of one’s concern for the lobster predicament, in this

In the essay “Consider the Lobster”, David Foster Wallace communicates his experience in the Main Lobster Festival as a writer for a food magazine called “Gourmet”. In this essay, he explores the impact the festival had on him as he tries to question the morals of eating lobsters. Wallace initially makes it seem as the festival is a place of fun and celebration as he describes the entertainment: concerts, carnival rides, lobster-themed food, lobster-themed clothes, and lobster-themed toys (50). In spite of that, he changes his attitude as he observes that the festival is actually promoting cruelty to animals and holds a long discussion whether or not lobsters can actually feel pain. Through the use of his language and description, Wallace convinces the audience as he claims to persuade the reader to stop eating lobsters, but he doesn’t explicitly say so at any point in the essay.

In “Consider the Lobster,” Wallace talks about the ethical side of cooking lobsters alive. He starts his passage by talking about the Maine Lobster Festival where people are consuming a lot each year. After pointing out that lobsters are basically giant sea insects, he goes on and explains the history of lobsters. Then the focus of the passage shifts to the discussion of morality behind consuming lobsters. Wallace goes on views both side of the debate on whether eating lobsters is ethical. In the passage, he discusses how it is ethical because lobsters do not feel pain because they don’t have cerebral cortex. And he debunks the fact by discussing an experiment that lobsters attempt to escape the boiling water. Then he goes on and continues

Throughout the article it is obvious by all the facts being used in the article to backup his argument. At times can be excessively used which can make the reader almost feel like they are not reading a magzine about food but a national geographic magazine. Which can at times bore the reader. However, for the most part his use of lothos helps support his argument. For example, Wallace says things in his article such as “ Like most arthropods … another planet ” (Wallace, 460). Wallace using these facts give inside to the audience about lobsters and where they derived from. He does this to inform his audience with facts to make him seem highly knowledge on lobsters. This also helps support his argument on lobsters by using facts such as these to show that he knows what he is talking about. Another example is when the author said “Lobsters tend to be hungriest and most active (i.e., most trappable) at summer water temperatures of 45- 50 degrees” (Wallace, 462). Once again the author uses logos and gives his audience more information about lobster. The quote also is another use of imagery which helps create a image inside the readers head of the pain and suffering lobsters go through that helps support the authors argument that lobsters can possibly feels

Wallace begins by using a story about fish in order to hook his listeners, ending with one of the fish humorously asking “What the hell is water?”(1). He explains that the meaning of the story is that “the most obvious important

The passage i will be analyzing is on pages 243 to page 244.The author's purpose for writing the passage “ The Turtle said ‘ I have eaten your tears, and this is why I know your misery. But I must warn you. If you cry, your life will always be sad.’” (243), is to convey the message that you shouldn't cry when something bad happens and if you do then you will not be able to live a happy life.

Wallace sets up a scenario for the reader that puts them in the mindset of the lobster itself, as it is being boiled. Wallace says that while the lobster is boiling it “…behaves as much as you or I would…” (Wallace 62). This sentence automatically makes the reader feel extremely uneasy about the idea of boiling a lobster, because all they can picture now is a human boiling. Wallace writes about the “…rattling and clanking…” of the lobsters while they boil and how their “…claws [scrape] the side of the kettle as it thrashes…,” using onomatopoeias to make the scenario all so real for the reader (Wallace

Bell uses many literary devices such as personification, pathetic fallacy, and symbolism in Crabbe to accentuate Crabbe’s vulnerability.

He writes: “The lobster will sometimes 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 roof.” This imagery uses a simile that horrifies the readers because it lets the readers feel like that they are the lobsters, and they are being cooked. Wallace uses this sentence to place the readers in the lobsters’ position and let them experience the pain. Later on, Wallace also says: “the lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water.” By making the connection between lobsters and human, Wallace knows that this would change people’s opinion towards cooking lobsters. Connecting lobsters’ death to humans’ is an effective way of using pathos to make people think whether eating lobsters is an appropriate matter. This shows how human preferences leads to lobsters’ suffering. Wallace not only uses pathos to make the readers think whether eating lobster is the right thing to do but also uses ethos to make him more credible and thus readers will listen to his

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is rich with an array of motifs, all which serve to sustain the novel’s primary themes. A motif particularly prevalent within the first half of the novel involves food, specifically Esther Greenwood’s relationship with food. This peculiar relationship corroborates the book’s themes of Esther’s continuous rebirthing rituals, and of her extreme dissatisfaction. The interrelation with food functions in two distinct manners: literally and figuratively. This analysis will concentrate on the figurative role of food in The Bell Jar, and how it denotes Esther’s overall state.