The Maine Pain

The gourmet food selection that is lobster draws quite the conversation. Do they feel pain? As they are cooked alive to preserve the "freshest food alive," I haven't stopped and thought about it from the lobster's point of view. If we were being boiled alive, we would try desperatly to esacpe the heat and possibly scream and vocally lash out. The same can be said for lobster, but in a different way. In his footnotes, David Foster Wallace mentions the myth of lobsters "screaming," but it actually is just the air trapped under their shells being released due to the high temperatures. While not true, the screaming Wallace incorporates in his footnotes is highly effective in that it gets readers thinking.

It is pretty obvious. No cookbook will tell you that the lobster should be alive when you cook it. It's a "detail so obvious" that many people disregard mentioning it! This can go back to the internalization of thoughts we discussed in Song of Solomon. Everyone's prejudices of African Americans during that time frame influenced the events that unfolded in that book. Similarily, Consider the Lobster points out how people normally don't, well, "Consider the Lobster."

Lobster can't really be given up. It is one of Maine's greatest features actually. On a trip there, trying the freshly prepared lobster was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. So while we should consider if lobster can feel pain and the most effective way to limit this pain, we also need to consider that meat is an essential staple to diets around the world.