Consider The Lobster

“For practical purposes, everyone knows what a lobster is. As usual, there’s much more to know than most of us care about—it’s all a matter of what your interests are.” 

After the first break in the text, Wallace moves from exposition to one of the themes of the essay: subjectivity. While a person can certainly go to the Maine Lobster Festival or enjoy eating a lobster at a restaurant, Wallace asks the reader to consider the ethics of doing so. In addressing that topic, Wallace suggests that there are multiple ways of looking at any topic and that one must ultimately confront the morality of any action by considering those other implications.

“The point is that lobsters are basically giant sea insects.”

After spending two paragraphs describing the taxonomy of lobsters, Wallace concludes with a blunt summary of what they are. In doing so, he flattens the posh, lofty ideal of what a lobster is by making a comparison to something that sounds completely unappetizing. He mentions immediately afterwards that they are “good eating,” though, and sets up one of the central tensions in the text: the experience of eating lobster juxtaposed with the reality of what lobster is.

“Nothing against the euphoric senior editor of Food & Wine, but I’d be surprised if she’d ever actually been here in Harbor Park, amid crowds of people slapping canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children.” 

Wallace is on assignment for a food magazine, Gourmet, that caters to luxury consumers, and he notes that the 2003 Maine