Something Interesting

In the class discussion of "Lobsters," one of the ideas that a classmate, I forget who, brought up which I thought was interesting was that the poem is sort of showing how death is random. The lobsters in the tank have no idea who will be picked to die next, but they all know that it will happen to them eventually.

However, this does not only apply to lobsters. It is the same for any creature, humans in particular. Everyone and everything that is alive will die eventually, whether it be after a few weeks or hundreds of years. I believe that the author is, in particular, referring to humans in this comparison, for a couple of reasons. The first of this is that throughout the entire poem the author compares lobsters and humans, so why wouldn't he compare them here? Another reason I believe this is that humans have the "most random deaths." While anything can die at birth, or from disease or old age, humans have many other ways in which they are killed. They could overdose on drugs, be run over by a car, be shot by a fellow human... the ways go on. By comparing the lobsters to humans, the author shows just how random and inevitable death is.