Consider the Sausage

While reading the article "Consider the Lobster," I was reminded of a movie I saw recently: Seth Rogan's Sausage Party. Sausage Party tells the story of a hot dog named Frank who has been told all of his life that his purpose in life is to leave the grocery store he lives in and enter "The Great Beyond," where food can go to live out the rest of their lives in happiness.  However, he eventually discovers the truth of what happens in "The Great Beyond" as he hears accounts of the brutal mutilation of some of his friends. Like the lobster piece, Sausage Party tackles the idea of how grotesque the cooking and preparation of food can be. Even though this movie mainly deals with the "lives" of processed and non-living foods, the message of both is the same: that there are many moral considerations when it comes to consuming living things. 

Similar to the graphic images in Sausage Party (seen above), David Foster Wallace uses rather haunting descriptions of how a lobster reacts when it is being boiled.  He describes how they "sometimes try to cling to the container's sides... like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof," and how "you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off."  Both of these accounts left me mortified and got me to see the idea of cooking and eating animals in a whole new light. While I don't think I could give up eating meat all together, I know I'll never be able to cook a lobster without Wallace's haunting words running through my mind.