Response on "Consider the Lobster" by David Foster Wallace

This article is very well-written, originally, partly exhilarating and thought-provoking at the same time. In a first part, Wallace is examining one of the biggest sea food festivals of the United States, the Maine Lobster Festival. He makes cynical comments about people’s behaviour during such festivals. However, the article continuously becomes more serious.

Wallace starts his determined inquiry into the in ethics of boiling lobsters alive by giving some background information about the lobster itself and how we usually don’t see him- as a insect living in the ocean. Later he is discussing how lobsters are cooked which was very unsettling to me. Of course did I know that lobsters are boiled alive, but the way he describes how these animals suffer from being boiled does not miss the effect and made me feel uncomfortable. He writes:

“However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off… The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you and I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming).”

So, Wallace intends to offer a very graphic picture of how the lobster suffers when boiled and intensifies our feelings by stating that we would behave the same way in case somebody places us into boiling water. Finally, he asks the reader if it is possible that “future generations will regard our own present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Aztec sacrifices?” Maybe this comparison far-fetched, however, we should consider how we deal with animals more often.

Response on “Other Math” by David Foster Wallace

This short story was very odd and unsettling. It is a story about a Joseph who has fallen in love with his grandfather and tells him so. Reading the short story’s title I did not expect is to deal with that kind of topic.

Letting declare the grandson’s love for his grandfather seems to be normal at first. Of course, do grandsons love their grandfather! But Reading further, the story becomes very odd since Joseph tries to explain to his grandfather that he really loves him

Generally, the author is playing games with the audience since he destroys anything we would expect to be normal. He adds weird details that do not really fit into an every-day conversation with a little boy, for instance, he is telling about somebody who has fallen in love with a “cadaver” and finally put him away. Also, the grandmother does not act like a we would expect from a grandmother by telling Joseph “Your Gram pa's h and w as a dead thing, attach ed to h is wrist by the same force that flung everything toward him, dead and brown, a flat, square conveyor of chill, an extension I never recognized and certainly never held.”

Finally, the oddest thing of the story is the way the speaker indirectly describes how the boy looks at the grandpa in a rather sexually manner. So he lets the grandpa refer to how the Joseph looks at him which makes the story very unsettling: “Don't say anything, Grampa. Just sit. Just like that. That's perfect.” or “Do an old man a favor and don't stare like that, son. All in all, it’s interesting how the author plays with our expectations of how society should look like.

Who Are You?

The creative part for this week’s and next week’s blog is an excerpt of one of my short stories. The following excerpt is scene one:


“Hey Mommy! How was your day?” Puzzled eyes are starring at me. Today, it’s one of these bad days. Again, I wished I could turn back the time and pretend I was living in 1975. It was a cheesy world for a little girl. It’s amazing how carefree kids can be. I remember our holidays at the coast. We used to go every summer on vacation. It was always the same place and the same people. We liked it though. “Do you remember the day, when I and Jimmy Wallace got into this fistfight? I can’t even remember how it happened. Can you? No? Anyways, when I came home you got mad at me. ’Not again’, did you say. And then I would tell you what had happened and you would grab my hand we would go to Jimmy’s parents in order to talk to them. You always seemed to be so strong and dominant. You were as firm as a rock. Can you imagine how often I wished to be like you? No? Why didn’t I tell you before? Maybe, you would have seen me with different eyes. Anyways, how was you day again? Could you please sit down? I’ve brought some lunch. I hope you like it. I mean you used to like it. Do you know what this is? No?” “Please, Mommy, don’t go to the phone and call 911. It’s not necessary. You know that, don’t you? It’s me, your daughter. What do you mean you have no daughter? Of course, you have. Look at me! I said look at me, please. Don’t you see how similar we look? No? My grandma always told me how similar we look. Remember? No?” I go toward you and try to embrace you. You seem to be as less affected as anybody could be… (to be continued)

Response to Good People by David Foster Wallace

Although the short story is very similar, even too similar to my taste, to Ernest Hemingway’s story entitled Hills like White Elephants, Good People written by David Foster Wallace is well done. It is amazing how the author gives the reader an insight in the main character’s life. We learn that the couple is facing some sort of problem and all indicates that the girl got pregnant and they both have decided to go to a doctor and have the baby aborted. Actually, the text does not reveal if it really is about an abortion. So the author kind of plays with the reader’s expectations and finally, lets him in the dark.

Moreover, the text strikes with many stylistic devices that makes the story more vivid. For instance, the speaker point’s at the girl’s cleanliness several times which seemed to be rather unusual to describe a person.

The girl wore a thin old checked cotton shirt with pearl-colored snaps with the long sleeves down and always smelled very good and clean, like someone you could trust and care about even if you weren’t in love.

Sheri’s hair was colored an almost corn blond, very clean, the skin through her central part pink in the sunlight

Describing how clean she is seems to indicate her pureness although she is pregnant.

All in all this short story is a very interesting one by not telling the reader concretely what really has happened to the young couple but by implying so much action.

Response on The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

Honestly, I am not sure yet whether I like this excerpt or whether not. This is may be because there is so less action in this piece of literature that helps me forming an opinion. This excerpt tells about a character who mentions his favourite place which is under the eucalyptus trees and his relationship to nature and how he perceives especially the eucalyptus trees and some animals.

The first odd thing about the character is how he discovers human traits in the eucalyptus trees:

“I began to notice that the uppermost twigs and leaves were lyrical happy dancers glad that they had been apportioned the top, with all that rumbling experience of the whole tree swaying beneath them making their dance … I noticed how the leaves almost looked human the way they bowed and then leaped up and then swayed lyrically side to side. It was a crazy vision in my mind but beautiful.”

Then he continues describing a “hummingbird, a beautiful little blue hummingbird no bigger than a dragonfly, kept making a whistling jet dive at me, definitely saying hello to me, every day, usually in the morning”.

This seems to create a very harmonic- even too harmonic- picture of the scene. But then he continues to say that he was “afraid he would drive right into my head with his long beaker like a hatpin”.

All in all it is interesting how the speaker creates a certain distance by on the one hand describing the romantic landscape picture and on the other hand perceiving a little hummingbird as a threat.

Creative Entry

In the following entry I tried to create some examples of irony based on last Friday’s session:

The current safety certificate behind the pane of plexiglass hanging incliningly above the seats impends to fell off today rather than yesterday due to a single rusty screw.

She walked on the path watching nature’s beauty, for instance, the little reddish squirrel running across the lawn before she went back to her room and killed a little spider rappeling from the ceiling with insect spray.

Response on Chapter 8

Chapter eight deals with the point of view in literature as well as with the authorial distance and its limitations in terms of liability of the narrator. It also includes aspects of irony which I found very interesting and challenging.

In respect to the liability I would like to respond on the short story entitled Story by Lydia Davis since this story shows in how far psychic distance can influence the reader’s thinking of the story.

Story is about a woman who has an affair with a man who obviously dates his ex- girlfriend. The way the author describes the character’s inner state and thoughts makes the readyer feel sympathy for the narrator. At the end of the story the first person narrator scrutinizes her boyfriends explanations of what had happened that particular night why his ex-girlfriend would be at his place. I think it is really realistic how the narrator measures all possibilties that would explain why the ex-girlfriend would be at his place:

“But what is the truth? Could he and she both really have come back in that short interval between my last phone call and my arrival at his place? Or is the truth really that during his call to me she waited outside or in garage or in her car and that he then brought her in again …”

Finally, the narrator becomes aware that her boyfriend that she cannot believe him but pretends to do so since she is so attached to him and does not want to lose him.