Consider the Lobster

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“Consider the Lobster” David Foster Wallace, back in 2004, wrote an intellectually compelling essay for Gourmet magazine titled “Consider the Lobster.” Wallace is a post-modern writer who doesn’t like to be classified as such. Coming from a home of philosophers and going to graduate school for writing, Wallace has a well-rounded outlook on life, but strangely seems at times as if he resides in his own reality. In his non-fiction essays, he is unconsciously represented as an all seeing eye offering a clear depiction of what the scenario is; and this is what is happening in Consider the Lobster. As a whole, “Consider the Lobster” is a difficult essay to read due to the way Wallace writes. With being a professor of literature comes a large vocabulary of the English language, and it is very relevant that Wallace’s vocabulary is filled with large, complex words that can intimidate a freshman college student like myself. Luckily, I am used to the way DFW (David Foster Wallace) writes. The only way I can get through more than 2 pages of Wallace’s writings is with a dictionary in hand, albeit he has a complex vocabulary, DFW also uses all sorts of jargon, self-generated acronyms and analogies. So with a dictionary in hand I begin to attack ”Consider the Lobster.” The first paragraph projects to be nothing less than what I expected from DFW. He quickly establishes his ethos, and logos adding facts and credibility that will make one feel like their genuinely attending the Maine Lobster Festival. He continues helping the reader visualize every detail of the festival. From listing the wide variety of lobster dishes, to citing where to find the winning recipe of the amateur cooking competition, “…the MLF’s Main Eating Tent, where something over 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught Maine lobster is consumed after preparation in the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker near the grounds’

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