Wallace attends the Maine Lobster Festival and asks whether it is morally acceptable to boil lobsters alive. The essay spirals outward into the philosophy of animal suffering, the ethics of food, and the nature of consciousness itself. Wallace's footnotes multiply; his sentences nest clauses within clauses. The piece is nominally food writing; it is actually philosophy in disguise. Wallace cannot write about anything without asking what it means to exist, what we owe other beings, what it costs to pay attention. The lobster becomes a test case for conscience itself.