David Foster Wallace reads "Consider the Lobster" (on the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival)

Originally published in the August 2004 issue of Gourmet magazine, this review of the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival generated some controversy among the readers of the culinary magazine. The essay is concerned with the ethics of boiling a creature alive in order to enhance the consumer's pleasure, including a discussion of lobster sensory neurons.

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"Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" This was the question posed by the renowned late author David Foster Wallace in "Consider the Lobster." Wallace, who was hailed by critics as a literary genius, wrote this article "to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival." Gourmet editors may have gotten more than they bargained for, but Wallace's words echoed the concerns of thinking people everywhere.

For Wallace, the Maine Lobster Festival inspired an unflinching inquiry into the ethics of boiling an animal alive. His article highlighted two specific coping mechanisms that people adopt when confronted with the reality of animal suffering--avoidance and denial. Wallace admitted that his "own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing." However, upon arrival at the Maine Lobster Festival, he found that "there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions."

Wallace's article explored the excruciating pain that lobsters feel when they are boiled alive, taking both scientific evidence and his own observations into account. He expands his analysis to consider the question of eating meat in general, as well as the deeper question of how humans relate to other animals. Read the full article here.

This essay was republished in Wallace's eponymous collection of essays.

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