Consider-lobster - Summary Consider the Lobster PDF

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Consider the lobster by David Foster Wallace summary...

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Jeremy Roshau P. 1 Rhetorical Analysis

In his essay Consider the Lobster, it’s apparent what David Foster Wallace is trying to tell his audience: we should really think about the lobster’s point of view before consuming it. David Foster Wallace uses a multitude of rhetorical strategies to get his point across, including pathos and ethos. His essay is ingenious in how it gets its point across, and how it forces even the largest lobster consumers to truly contemplate how the lobster might react to its consumption. It brings up many controversial topics of animal rights that many people tend to avoid, especially people who are major carnivores. Wallace’s use of rhetorical strategies really gets the reader thinking, and thoroughly captures the argument of many vegetarians against the consumption of animals.

David Foster Wallace really captures the use of pathos in his essay Consider the Lobster, and uses it in a way that is incredibly convincing to the reader. For example, he compares the Maine Lobster Festival to how a Nebraska Beef Festival could be, stating, “at which part of the festivities is watching trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and slaughtered right there…” Playing off of people’s natural tendency to feel bad for the cattle, he shows that the killing of lobster is, in reality, no different than the killing of cattle, yet we treat it much differently. We tend to think that lobsters are different because they are less human than cows are, and, maybe to make us feel better about our senseless killing of an animal, that they feel no pain when slaughtered. Again, Wallace uses pathos to tug at the heartstrings of the reader, when he says, “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 horrifying metaphor really shows how inhumane the general cooking method can seem when looked at through this lens. This metaphor puts the reader into the position of the lobster, making people feel bad. Wallace proves his point further when he mentions that “the lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water.” Comparing an animal most people consider food so closely to human interaction is an incredibly effective method. People can truly feel for the lobster that is being cooked alive, and may change their view of lobster cooking totally different. Using people’s emotion to ponder lobsters, and what they go through in the process of cooking, was an ingenious way of getting his point across.

Another way David Foster Wallace gets his point across to his audience is his use of ethos. During the first half of the essay, where he described the MLF, Wallace talked mainly in the first person, but in the second half, when discussing animal rights, he talked in the third person. This allowed him to distance himself from the reader, and establish himself as an authority, as he is not an authority on cooking or lobster festivals, but rather one on animal rights. Wallace also states that “It is difficult not to sense that they're unhappy, or frightened, even if it's some rudimentary version of these feelings,” showing his knowledge of the way lobsters react to the pot of boiling water. Also he says “even if it's some rudimentary version of these feelings and, again, why does rudimentariness even enter into it?” showing that we shouldn’t base whether or not we should treat them better based on what the pain level they feel. No matter what pain level is felt, from high to low, we should change what we are doing to accommodate the lobster. Through his prior knowledge and what he knew before, David Foster Wallace proves his point that lobsters do need to be treated better than they are at the moment.

Using multitude of rhetorical strategies, David Foster Wallace proves that the way we treat animals is inhumane. His use of both ethos and pathos is incredibly convincing and shows how ingenious the essay really is. Also, his uses of metaphors really bring the audience into the perspective of the lobster. They make you truly mull over whether or not the way we treat animals that we kill is the real way we should be going about it. Every bit of detail in the essay really makes you consider the lobster....