Lobsters discussion

While participating in the “Lobsters” discussion this week, I heard some ideas that hadn’t occurred to me while reading the poem. Many people spoke of the lobsters being a metaphor to death, which is true but also a very easy connection to make. Then, people started to bring up how humans are like lobsters and somebody said that we could look at the lobsters and think that they are doing nothing but that if some big creature looked into our classroom, they would just see us sitting at desks, and to them it would look like we are doing nothing. This was a very interesting connection made, at least, to me.

That idea really helped me connect to the idea that the lobsters represented humans in a symbolic theme. These and a few other ideas helped me make the connection between humans and the lobsters in the poem. Comparing the lobster to humans hadn’t even occurred to me as a real powerful symbol, until I heard people back it up in the discussion. It helped me identify a deeper meaning than “the lobsters are a metaphor for death.” Thank you to the students who helped show me how very different things can become the same in meaning, if not in image.