This essay was very interesting to me since I am from the Rockland area. I have attended the Lobster Festival ever since I was a kid. Lobster is one of the main things that brings people in during the summer. My father was born and raised in Rockland and has been going to the festival ever since he was a kid. Many people in that area lobster, including my father. It is a good paying job and is a lot of hard work. 

I understand the essay is supposed to cover the topic of whether or not it is okay to boil lobsters alive and whether they feel pain or not. I think one of the questions I would ask Mr. Wallace is if he eats lobsters anyways? Or if he eats any other type of seafood like crabs or clams? Or even if he eats meat? Eating any of these could be considered cruel. I Would ask him if he had previously been to Maine when it wasn’t Festival season? I would also ask him why he chose to target the Lobster Festival? 

This essay was clearly biased towards the fact that we shouldn’t boil lobsters. I would also say that he was trying to give the Lobster Festival a bad reputation. I would’ve liked him to focus more on how lobsters feel pain rather than him talking about our local sea goddess pageant and how it is “excruciatingly long,” when that clearly has nothing to do with boiling a lobster. Lots of ways he described the Festival made it seem like a bad place to visit. The festival is supposed to have that county fair feel to it. It has more than just boiling lobsters and pageants. It has rides and vendors and local artists showcase some of their work. Most of the people who sit in the tent, from my experience, aren’t normally locals. It is a local fisherman that provides the lobsters, but that is it. I’ve only seen my parents have it there once. 

When you eat other types of meat those animals also experience pain when being killed. Lots of those animals go through much worse than the lobsters do. Lots of beef and other meats you get at your local grocery store has been injected with different steroids that also cause the animals pain but this pain lasts longer.