Lobsters or Humans?

When I first read this poem not one single theme or meaning jumped at me. Nothing spoke to me, and I hated the poem yet after having read it again, I started to notice the complex and deep symbolism this poem has to offer. No longer do I see it as a boring story about lobsters but as an insightful grasp on the concepts of lobsters being a lot like humans. I don't think we talked about the ideas of lobsters and humans in our fishbowl discussion, but some comments made me later think deeper into the comparison of an invertebrate and a human being.

The author talks about the lobsters dream like state, I personally think that most humans travel through the day in a dream like state as well. As I looked around in English today I noticed many people staring off into space, or fidgeting; in fact I saw no one who looked completely absorbed in what we were doing. Why is this so? It seems as though we go through life in a dull, stolid rhythm; school, friends, homework, sleep, school. What do we live for? And the lobsters "tentative gestures" how is that not like us? What are we doing that makes us stand out? How many times have we heard the phrase "be yourself" but instead you keep hiding away? We muddle around not realizing that we are never truly awake. Another way that I think describes tentative gestures is being average, or moderate and the following quote from "Way of the Warrior" sums moderation up perfectly, "Moderation's? It's mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It's the devils dilemma. It's neither doing nor not doing. It's the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It's for those afraid to laugh or cry, those afraid to live or die!" The author includes the beauty of the lobsters to show how in our narrow minded way of thinking we have categorized everything, something is beautiful or ugly. He showed us our warped point of view by describing something that we normally categorize as ugly in a beautiful way. I think the poem was a message to us humans that we need to wake up and come to terms that everything is beautiful and ugly, that life will always go on and it is up to us to realize we are in the pot underneath the fire - in other words we will die - and live.