I'm pretty sure lobster feel pain when boiled.

I have come across this argument before in my life and asked myself whether or not it is right to use such cruelty in preparing a meal. I too am a bit confused on what to think really (Fortunately the times I have had lobster my dad has bought it and prepared it from Costco, and it wasn’t live). I do feel for the lobster but like Wallace I am stuck in the middle.
In, Consider the Lobster, David Wallace questions his own morality as well as the ethical point of view of society. Not only is he questioning his morality I think that he is genuinely confused about what his ethics are on the situation at hand. He presents the life of a lobster in a historical context by explaining that people compared lobsters to rats. They were the giant bugs of the sea, with an “Unbelievable abundance”. He also cites that it was inhuman treatment to feed a convicted prisoner with lobster meat more than once a week in the past. He refers to them practically as the “Garbage men of the Sea” even. However, he does not do this in an insulting way, but rather mentions this as sort of an ironic point after mentioning all the great things about the Maine Lobster Festival, which he basically describes as s lobster connoisseur’s heaven (and in case you think it’s not ironic to him or to you, it’s definitely ironic to me).
He follows this by presenting the personal side of a lobster. He achieves this by giving the lobster humane like qualities in comparing how lobsters grasp on to the edge of a boiling pot, to how humans would grasp on to the edge of a building in order to save their respective lives. He describes in detail how they die, and how long it takes for them to die. He makes you feel their pain. He is stuck and cannot choose what the correct way of going by this is though. Thus he questions the morality in such a cruel action and he realizes that he doesn’t know what is right. There are two extremes and no clear line in the middle.
He reaches the point where he stops questioning the matter because he would rather not think about the lobster’s cruel fate when he’s trying to enjoy it.
On the footnotes, I think he includes those longer types of entries not only to expand on certain unknown facts but also to give a more in depth point of view. I think that if Gourmet did publish the article they probably cut out the second part, so as to not discourage anyone from their business or their sponsor’s business.