Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

Wallace's Lobster The purpose of David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster" is to draw attention to a gourmet favorite -- lobster -- while attending a Lobster Fest. His intention is not just to highlight how the world loves to eat lobster but also to raise a moral/ethical conundrum associated with modern eating habits -- that is, the agribusiness of killing animals that we might devour them.

Wallace admits that his own personal opinion is to view animals as "less morally important than human beings" but that this should not prevent others from sharing their views, whether they agree or disagree (Wallace, 2004, p. 7). His main objective in penning the article is to provoke thought on something that people might otherwise prefer not to think about -- namely, the relationship between aesthetics and morality (if, that is, morality is even something that can and should be applied to the cooking of lobsters).

One descriptive writing pattern used in the essay is Wallace's use of rhythmic questioning in order to transcend the issues presented in the article and propel the thesis to a higher, more abstract ground. This is evident in the conclusion of the piece, where Wallace fires six questions off in a row -- over the span of 167 words -- all focusing on provoking the reader to question his own thoughts and feelings on the subject at hand.

It is meant, in other words, to lift the lid on the topic and allow a whole new flow of ideas and connected extensions of the issue to emerge. It is a method of describing the ultimate conclusion or ultimate ramifications of the topic without having to become "preachy" or "shrill" as Wallace puts it (2004, p. 8). Moreover, this method is supported by Wallace's use of alliteration, consonance and assonance.

The first refers to the repetition of sounds at the beginnings of words that follow one another -- for example, in Wallace's questioning paragraph, one sees the line "previous paragraph as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand?" "Previous paragraph...pointless" is an example of alliteration -- the repetition of the "p" sound at the beginning of the words.

The "s" sound is also used repeatedly throughout and is an example of consonance: it appears at the end of "previous," "as," "just," "pointless," "makes," "inside," "dismiss." Assonance is seen in the repeated use of the "ee" sound -- "preeveeous," "gazeeng," "feel" -- and in the short "i" sound: "inside," "dismiss," "issue." In short, Wallace supports his descriptive questioning pattern with sounds that create a rhythm within the sentences (Sound Sound Sound, n.d.) -- which makes them both musical and attractive to the reader so that he/she is swept up into the vortex of ideas that Wallace is intending to effect.

It is used well by Wallace because it is effective -- the reader may or may not agree with his point-of-view, but he cannot help but begin to consider more deeply the ideas that Wallace raises -- simply because the manner in which Wallace has posed them has captured the reader's attention and set his/her mind to working.

I plan to use the same descriptive writing pattern in my personal essay by using this descriptive questioning technique to connect with my reader in an abstract personal way -- so that we can literally reach across space and time to touch on something that, while personal to me, actually has universal applications or qualities that everyone should be able to recognize and identify. To.