Response to Wallace

This article is about the annual Maine Lobster Festival, its activities, and its participants.

The article begins with some background information of the festival, as well as some background information on the lobster as a species. He gives a relatively neutral description of the lobster festival, followed by the history/ evolution of eating lobster.Wallace introduces the idea that lobster is desired because its one of the freshest food there is due to it being cooked alive. This idea brings up the main concept of the article: Is it morally alright to cook a live lobster?

Wallace spends a good deal of time elaborating on whether or not lobsters feel pain, and it they do, whether they experience pain in the sense that humans do. I  actually think he spends too much time on this point. While the answer to this question is important to whether or not its morally okay to cook a lobster alive, I think he should have touched upon the fact that we are cooking them alive without definitively knowing whether or not they experience pain the way we do. Wallace also asks why we aren’t thinking of what we think of the process’ morality.

I think this article is well written. While he does come across as a little preachy, he is very convincing because he uses a combination of discrete facts as well as personal narrative (which is often humorous) to convey information as well as his opinions. I think PETA would be more effective if they used the same strategies that Wallace does to convince the reader that cooking lobster alive is wrong, and that its pretty disappointing that the people attending the festival as well as cooking lobster alive anywhere aren’t thinking about whether or not what they are doing is ethically acceptable.