Lobster Festival

The Maine Lobster Festival is supposed to be a celebration inviting anyone and everyone to celebrate the delectable lobster, but Wallace uses it to shed some light on the welfare of the animal when cooking and eating it. He does a great job at analyzing the festival as well as challenging the meaning of food based on how we define the animals we consume. This includes the substitution of words, people’s ignorance, and the scientific language. The way we identify food can all be supported by these three main influences. First off Wallace does an excellent job on creating a background and explanation of the festival. “The assigned subject of this article is the 56th Annual MLF, July 30 to August 3, 2003, whose official theme was “Lighthouses, Laughter, and Lobster” (Wallace 50). Already you can see the effect of words on the event. The theme uses the word laughter in order to convey a sense of happiness. However, some people would disagree when thousands of pounds of lobsters are killed in order for the event to take place. This word usage not only can be used to convey happiness but be used as to keep up morality.

“Is it significant that “lobster,” ”fish,” and “chicken” are our culture’s words’ for both the animal and the meat, whereas most mammals seem to require euphemisms like “beef” and “pork” that help us separate the meat we eat from the living creature the meat once was?” (Wallace 62). Euphemisms for food can definitely be used as a way for us not to associate it with death. Not only that but there is an expansive list for it such as poultry, seafood, etc. My mom would use words like beef or pork to me when I asked her what food was. Now I know they’re synonymous to dead cow or dead pig. The way we use our words can impact our morals on subjects such as food in my case. Not only that, but it can keep your ignorance on a