Blog #5

As I first started reading the article, I thought they were mainly going to focus on this traditional festival that’s been going on in some quaint little town for years. Like Wallace mentions, there are tons of towns across the US that celebrate their local cuisine with festivals. Even in my home town we have different festivals centered around some food that attracts many tourists. The first turn he takes doesn’t really catch me off guard, since he begins to discuss lobsters scientifically and the history humans have with them. Many times, these types of articles discuss the history behind the local festivals. The research that is presented here is very detailed and it is evident that Wallace put a lot of time and effort into conducting this research. I could definitely see why this might be the basis for our second project. Yet, when Wallace begins to criticize the immoral way that the Maine Lobster Festival treats the lobsters, he makes this point as an outsider, who doesn’t seem to have any real interest in joining that community and really only went there because he was assigned to. He doesn’t see himself in this community, at the present or in the future. Therefore, I feel that we were supposed to look at the research he conducted in order to write this article, like immersing himself in the culture and interviewing the locals, as the focus point for the research we are to do for Project 2.