Consider the Audience

In Consider The Lobster, David Foster Wallace argues that animals- specifically, lobsters- suffer through complex issues due to humans. Although people may believe that they are superior to animals, cooking lobsters are considered to be a moral decision that is disrespectful and unethical. Using the Maine Lobster Festival as the setting, Wallace uses descriptive language to describe the chefs that toss the alive lobsters-their "claws are pegged or banded to keep them from tearing right one another under the stresses of captivity"-in a boiling pot. In describing the process of killing and cooking the lobster, Wallace brings up two main ethical questions. Can lobsters feel pain? If lobsters can feel pain, can they display behavior to express pain? While Wallace does express the fact that lobsters don't have a similar nervous system, the lobster's scrabbling against the pot is an expression of pain and will to survive. Throughout the piece, Wallace describes the pain of a lobster in human-like terms. The idea that a lobster can shed tears and support one another in "captivity" highlights Wallace's point.
Along with certain rhetorical devices Wallace used, his setting was advantageous. In August for five days, people-especially tourists-feast upon thousands of lobsters. As a non-profit organization, volunteers and fisherman gather to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to fundraise for local stations or other organizations. With a start in 1947, the festival offered a lobster for a $1, feeding many people in need. However, this barely passed the money spent to hold the festival, and so the price increased over time. Now, it can bring in "1 million dollars of "outside" money." This has proved the transfer of worth of the festival and the lobsters that it sells, in conjunction with what Wallace proves.

I DONT want a CHILD

"I belong to a classification of people known as" children. "I am" A Child. "And, not altogether incidentally, I am a" disappointment. 

I am a living organism that exploits food, clothing, and space. In return, I create messes and a hub of sadness for my parents. Let me start from the beginning...

I wake up at 8 am when I could've woken up at 6 am. I eat breakfast and put away the dishes and milk, but I forget to put the cereal away. Oops. I walk upstairs silently to maintain the silence for my baby brother, but I stepped on one of the many toys scattered across the house. The baby wakes up. Oops. I head to my room to complete my homework, practice my project for the science fair, and submit my papers for extracurriculars. But, the neighbor next door made it to Harvard. Oops. I start the vacuum to clean the entire house, but I didn't unload the dishwasher. Oops. I look at my phone, staring at the girls that went to a restaurant to have fun with their friends, but my mom walked by and I wasn't studying. Oops. I open my ACT score. I got a 35. But, my best friend got a 36. Oops. I play tennis for two hours and return to eat food, but I wasted 3 hours, and have only studied for 6 hours today. Where will I get in life? Oops. I head downstairs to talk to my parents, but I'm only wasting time. Oops. At 2 am, I finished writing the essay due next month, but I forgot to turn the lights off. My dad mumbles, "How useless of a child. Should've never had children. She can't do one thing right. It must've been my bad fate or horrible deeds of my previous life..."

Then, I start the next day. The goal of each day is to not shed one more tear. Only, 355 days till I move out on my own money. I can wait. I have to wait. 

LET me cry

I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry so bad. I wanted to cry my eyes out so there are no tears left. I wanted to leave my eyes dried out. So I did. So I accomplished in erasing one of my markers, or so I thought. So I melted the one thing that people might have once remembered me by.

Crying. Emotional tears. Emotional tears form in the cerebrum where sadness is registered leading the endocrine system to release hormones to the ocular area, therefore presenting the final result: tears. Charles Darwin once declared emotional tears to be “purposeless.”

That’s the definition of crying. The ONLY definition of crying.

Then why do I see every parent saying to their baby –not any baby, a baby boy- “boys don’t cry. REAL boys don’t cry. Real boys are strong.”

Either these parents research the statistics of each gender of crying or they’re marking every other girl out there. The stereotype that boys should be rough, tough, and non-crybabies simultaneously shames girls.

Perhaps a boy crying is a marker for men; however, a girl crying is representative of dependency and a sensitive nature, which is preferable. A girl not crying is representative of independence and strength, which may make a male feel less helpful and valuable. In each and every way, we are marked. Marked in ways that are unexpected and unprecedented.

Why am I being marked for my endocrine system’s ability to release hormones to the ocular area? Why am I being marked for wanting to express my discontent? Why am I being pushed to not produce emotional tears?

Let me cry. Let me not cry. Let me do what I want without being...marked. 

Switch

Angelou’s piece in a different perspective:

The Domaine Leroy Richebourg Grand Cru 1949 was being passed around. In case you are not aware, that’s a hell of a wine. The dad’s sat at the bar in my house and passing around the wine glasses and prosciutto-wrapped pears. The mothers sat on the other side of the 4000 square foot home, sipping Chateau Lafite 1787 and gossiping about the rise of the new black fighter: Joe Lob. I think it’s Joe Lob anyways. Most people in my family called him by another name: charcoal. The kids and I sat in front of the television in wait for the boxing to fight.

I was ten at that time. I had absolutely no idea of what this fight meant.

As the fight started, the men strode across the hallway to the Onyx Sofa by Peugeot, while the ladies stuffed the sleeping children into strollers and gossiped further. We breathed. We hoped. We waited.

I heard one uncle start saying “That black boy is gonna cause some problems if he succeeds in-“

Before he could finish, my bearded uncle interrupted saying ‘Ain’t no black going to succeed. God don’t love um. If he did, he would’ve never bestowed them in chains at our feet. They are “stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty, and unlucky…” (Angelou)’

However, that uncle knew very little. As the game progressed, the wine bottles emptied and the food vanished, but the game didn’t end. As Lobs penetrated each part of our pride and soul, we sat in silence knowing that this was the end.

My dad muttered under his breath “I don’t think this is the end of something, but the start of something more. Something more important. Something imminent. Something we fear so very much.”