David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace chooses to write "Consider the Lobster" in order to present a tactful debate between American greed and animal cruelty/welfare. This animal is the Maine Lobster, which is a Crustacean and thought as an insect in the ocean, it will consume dead animals, this makes it a bottom feeder "garbagemen of the sea...like making people eat rats" (Wallace 242). Historically it was consumed by the poor and was not considered the delicacy it is today. Since it is a delicacy people attend the Maine Lobster Festival (MLF) every summer in order to consume mass amounts of this animal. It is the preparation, cooked alive in a boiling pot of water, that Wallace has presented in this essay along with people's greed and the choice to ignore the cruelty/welfare of the lobster. This article was published in Gourmet Magazine in August 2004, a summer month. A well known fact that if one has ever subscribed to any magazine you receive it a month prior to the published date on the cover. Meaning July, another summer month, is when subscribers received this magazine which is at the height of ordering and mass consumption of lobsters. The lobster is easily trapped during the summer months and thus consumed the most. Was this a coincidence that Mr. Wallace presented a text that gave his audience time to ponder on this issue and ultimately agree that "the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it's also uncomfortable" (Wallace 245)?

Greed is a powerful emotion that is coupled with envy. "Tourism and lobster are the midcoast region's two main industries...both warm-weather enterprises" (Wallace 241). Two communities, Camden and Rockland, that are in different status class will unite for this festival. Camden, old money, is an upscale city that depends on the tourism to fill their Bed & Breakfast vacancies, while Rockland is a working class fishing community that provide the lobsters to be consumed. The lobsters are the reason for the tourism, without them these two communities would not likely interact; greed forces these two communities to interlink for a short time, summer months. This is a seasonal part of the country since the lobster is easily trapped during the summer months. American greed has consumed us in that lobsters "20 pounds or more are rare...New England's waters are so heavily trapped" (Wallace 243) with our growing appetites for bigger and better, envious of what the next person has on their dinner plate we as a society demand for the biggest lobster.

Although, lobsters were not always in demand, they were once thought as low class food because of their large quantities; one was able to hand pick them off the shore after a storm. People protested when the prison system tried to feed them to prisoners calling it "cruel and unusual" punishment and servants to the wealthy did not want to eat lobster more than twice a week. An animal that was once ground up for fertilizer is now being served in restaurants with the clientele gladly paying in upwards of twenty dollars or more. The tides have certainly changed, since there is money to be made now. Stream lined transportation systems were the catalyzed to the demand of the lobster "the U.S. industry produces around 80 million pounds of lobster, and Maine accounts for more than half that total" (Wallace 243). A sizable difference to the 20,000 pounds consumed during the MLF. Wallace chose to publish this