Consider The Lobster : Human Selfishness

There are a lot of bad people in the world. For example, John Wilkes Booth was a very bad person. He destroyed people’s sense of safety. When he killed the president of the United States, it made citizens feel unprotected and that something even worse would happen. He’s a villain for killing Abraham Lincoln. However, there are good people too. Martin Luther King Jr. was a hero. This is because he was a civil rights leader. He was a very kind man who was influential and also a great man to our country. Instead of making people feel unsafe and scared like what John Wilkes Booth did, Martin Luther King made people feel good about themselves and he made freedom. History is related to the novel Tangerine written by Edward Bloor.

In Consider The Lobster, David Foster Wallace raises an ethical question: “Is it right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” However, this essay is not to provide a definite answer to this question but lets the readers come up with their own answers. Wallace uses rhetorical strategies such as comparison, imagery, and questions to make the audiences think deep about the moral lens of consuming lobsters.

The answers Pollan offers to the seemingly straightforward question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the

Everyone has an opinion when it comes to animals being killed and eaten. If a person agrees or not is completely their own opinion and will not be the focus of the essay. David Wallace’s essay “ Consider the Lobster,” is used to address perspectives of varying opinions while trying to persuade the reader. The author accomplishes this throughout the essay through the excellent use of multiple rhetorical techniques. Rhetorical devices such as ethos, lothos and pathos are all used in the essay to convey the author's opinion and try to convince the reader to choose a side.

Philosophers have debated for centuries the question “Are humans are selfish or selfless?” There are two main arguments for debating human nature, ethical egoists and ethical altruists. Ethical egoists believe that “even though we can act in others’ interests because we are concerned for others, we ought always to act in our own interest” (Solomon et al 2012 p. 460). Ethical altruists believe quite the opposite; ethical altruism is the belief that “people ought to act with each other’s interests in mind” (Solomon et al 2012 p. 461). In discussing the four theories, psychological egoism, psychological altruism, ethical egoism, and ethical altruism, with my husband, there was not a clear dividing line for whether humans are selfish or selfless in nature. After much debate, we concluded that humans are born ethical egoists; however, ethical altruists are made through proper training, care, and nurture.

On the other hand, David Foster Wallace’s article, “Consider the Lobster”, takes on a softer, more exploratory approach in his voice, stylistic, and rhetorical devices that is less effective in persuading his reader. King uses stronger words to evoke emotions in his reader and get them to understand that there is a problem with racism. On the contrary, Wallace does not reveal his opinion until later in his article to make his reader think about his or her moral standings on the possibly inhumane killing of lobsters. These are all things to consider when persuading or compelling an audience. Even though both articles took on very different and good approaches, one was more captivating and evoked a yearning for change in the reader. As a people, we all have a sense of morality and the difference between right and wrong. But in the busyness and the craziness of life, sometimes the lines between the two become blurred and forgotten. Just like the authors, David Foster Wallace and Martin Luther King Jr., it took just one person to stop, look around, and point out to the world where there is injustice and immorality that needs to be altered for the

From two perspectives, we see a world plagued by the ignoble aspects of human nature. Through one set of eyes we are shown the global ecosystem imitating the opening motions of a mass extinction, through another we see the inevitable and hellish effects of culturalized greed. In both cases we are treated to the observations of an aggrieved observer, but the means by which these observers show us their perspective on the world are by no means identical. Here we will explore the strategies, expressions, argumentations, and appeals of two authors with intertwining stories to tell.

If you have ever cooked a lobster, you know the sickening image of it clinging to the pot to avoid the boiling water, or the stomach churning sound of it scratching the insides of the kettle during its final moments. In David Foster Wallace’s essay, Consider the Lobster, he explores the complex and uncomfortable ethics of eating lobsters. After a vivid description of all the happenings of the Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace asks the reader to consider the inhumanities of boiling lobsters alive for the sake of consumer satisfaction. Wallace employs the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos, and pathos to enhance his argument. Although some people may disagree with Wallace and assert that cooking Homarus americanus cannot be considered a moral decision,

Florida Atlantic University, Dept. of Psychology, Davie, FL 33314 USA [E-mail: wmckibbi@fau.edu, tshackel@fau.edu] The Omnivore’s Dilemma is the latest book by Michael Pollan, best known for his previous best‐ selling work, The Botany of Desire. Here, Pollan has crafted a well‐written and enjoyable  exploration of humans’ relationship with food. The book is written for a lay audience, but is  appreciable by all.    Pollan begins by focusing on a seemingly simple question,

Bartel (1976) defines prosocial behaviour as ‘behaviour that intentionally helps or benefits another person’. Batson (1987) defines altruism as ‘helping another person for no reward, and even at some cost to oneself.’ This definition of altruism seemingly depicts the behaviour as selfless, however there is a wealth of research which suggests that this is not the case.

Despite mankind’s inventiveness and interior capacities for almost every wonderful field of study, it wholly compromises its principles and remains dishonest. More than seven billion people compose humanity’s seemingly intangible collective, each one of whom is an individual with a separate set of principles and identities. However, most of mankind is dedicated to the uniform desire to advance their own interests. Moral compromise and the inherited sense of self-interest have prevented any true harmonic pattern in society, and have caused problems that exist and dominate us at the present time. If society wholly refused to compromise its principles for the sake of self-interest, there would be a major change in our world affairs. However, self-indulgence

The gluttonous lords of the land capture those who are unable to defend themselves, boil the captives alive, and then feast on their flesh. Could this be the plot of some new summer blockbuster? It could be, in fact, but for now we will focus on how this depiction of events compares to David Foster Wallace’s essay, “Consider the Lobster,” which starts as a review of the Maine Lobster Festival, but soon morphs into an indictment of not only the conventions of lobster preparation, but also the entire idea of having an animal killed for one’s own consumption. Wallace shows great skill in establishing ethos. In the essay, he succeeds in snaring a receptive audience by laying out a well-baited trap for an

In Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, the author questions why is it ok "to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?"(Wallace, 60). Wallace questions why people, those who eat the lobsters, find it morally and ethically correct to eat a sentient being that has been tortured. Wallace uses the lobster to convey the picture of a sentient creature being tortured before its consumption, through this he explains the preferences of the people who eat these creatures and how their morals and ethics have been redefined to find the process acceptable. This paper will discuss Wallace 's examination of his question and how the solution relates to preference, morals, and ethics. While on the surface the essay is about why those eating lobster find it alright to torture the creature first before consuming it, what the author is really exploring is humans "preferring" not to cross paths with moral problems like torture, causing ethical practices to progress the avoidance and less urgency of these moral problems.

Zygmunt Bauman is the writer and author of consuming life and liquid modernity. He is among the pioneering founders of the post-modernism theory that is characteristic of most theories in sociology and philosophy. The concepts and positions posited by Baunam will be heavily relied upon in the composition of this essay – albeit subject to diverse opinions in analysis and with reliance of critique that is presented from various avenues such as contradictory theories to those of the author. In consuming life, Bauman asserts that consumerism has surpassed the mundane quality of consumption. This means that human advancement has led to the quintessential disorder where consumerism coerces humans into lukewarm and superficial meeting of needs and desires, as opposed to consumption which was individualistic in nature and self-gratifying. Individuality is the opposite of consumerism. Bauman attests that desires and life of worth can be attained only from egoistic search of satisfaction. However, individualistic system and egoism cannot push societies to prosperity and advancement. Insofar as consumerism contorts human culture and introduces dangers of ideology and religion, it is only through consumerism that advances in humanity and advancement that man can utilize ideologies such as capitalism, laissez faire conditions, international trade, diplomacy, and other diverse attributes in transforming human culture.

One cannot truly change the world around without first mastering the art of looking beyond oneself and into the outside world. This idea of looking beyond oneself has been the focus of ancient and modern philosophers throughout the world. In “The Is Water”(2005), a commencement address, David Foster Wallace, a modern day philosopher, implies that people generally view the world from a selfish perspective and elaborates on how the world should work to reverse its self-centered ways. Wallace reveals his topic through a series of anecdotes, each highlighting a different way we are focused on ourselves and then providing a way to view each situation from a different perspective. Wallace’s purpose is to point out the faults in thinking only for