Lobsters

   

I think it was actually you Mrs. Gilman who brought up the Holocaust, and when you said that, it changed my whole perspective of the poem. The poem talks the whole time about these caged lobsters, who are just sitting in a cage awaiting their death. People walk by and stare at them, but nobody thinks about how cruel this process actually is. The lobsters just have to stay there in conditions they probably don’t like, with they're claws all tied up and everything.

When I first read the poem it was simply about lobsters in a grocery store, but if you go back in read it with the Holocaust in mind, it turns into a scary, very sad poem. The lobsters are doomed, they are going to die in that tank, or be taken to somebody’s home and killed there. Jewish people were taken to isolation camps and either died of starvation, or were suffocated in gas chambers. Suddenly, this poem has a way deeper meaning than just lobsters in a grocery store. The resemblance to the Holocaust is huge and I definitely think this poem was the author’s way of telling how he felt about that. It makes much more sense to why the author chose to use lobsters instead of any other animal.