Analysis Of David Foster Wallace's 'Consider The Lobster'

The USDA released a document pertaining to the number of cattle, calves, hogs, and sheep. In 2016, 118,303,900 hogs alone were documented as slaughtered by farms and commercial sites. Ranking second, 30,676,100 cattle were killed in the same year. At this high of a rate of slaughter, something must be done to prevent over extermination of these animals that are raised to die. Animals are tortured in cramped and unsanitary facilities; society are also left in the dark about where food that is supposedly fresh and clean of bacteria. Officials who are meant to regulate the public’s safety allow major beef and poultry companies to get what they want; to keep the consumer in the dark and not let outsiders inside of the production facilities. The
The animals are physically tortured during their life and the killing process is often brutal. David Foster Wallace describes the scene of the Maine Lobster Festival in his article “Consider the Lobster”.Wallace specifically highlights the main attraction, the World's Largest Lobster Cooker, as a publicly acceptable form of publix slaughter. He goes on to describe the process to kill a lobster; it is boiled alive. When it is placed in the boiling water, it often attempts to “hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof.” Wallace creates a picture in the reader's mind of a lobster that comes alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. This prompts many home cooks and do-it-yourselves, even experienced cooks, to leave the room to free their ears of the thrashing and scratching of the pot from the lobster. Thus, Wallace makes his final point that one should be conscious that a lobster is boiled alive just for the enjoyment of the
When the consumer walks into the grocery store, pictures of clean and airy farmlands atop rolling fields paints a false picture of where meat actually comes from. The film Food, Inc shows the inside of multiple chicken houses to show the general, devastating, reality of life for farm animals. The scene is loud, dark, and cramped; most chicken houses are over packed and kept in the dark. The house owner, Carole Morison, says darkness is needed especially when the birds are taken to the slaughter houses because it keeps them calm. Among this chaos, the birds