Creative Speech : This Is Water By David Foster Wallace

This is Water, was a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. Ever since this speech has been given it has become well known. Because of the length, it can be hard to read through the speech while trying to understand the whole idea of it. Wallace fills the speech with stories, examples, and vivid ideas while trying to convince these college graduates how to view life in a positive perspective. While this speech is packed full of ideas he manages to give it in a way outside of the norm for commencement speeches. Yet still gets all the information to the graduates and anyone else who listens to it.

Identifying Ethos, Pathos and Logos in “This is Water” Look back over the speech in order to complete the following. How does David Foster Wallace build his ETHOS in the speech? Give 5 SPECIFIC examples. After each example, explain how it builds his ethos. “I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in the universe.”

Through proving that we are not always correct, and reminding the audience that different people can have different views of reality, Wallace is able to use logical reasoning to show that humans have the ability to change their perspectives.

2. What does Wallace mean when he refers to the “natural, hard-wired default setting” of himself and others (paragraph 3)? To what extent do you think that most of us are “deeply and literally self-centered”?

Wallace establishes a humorous tone in the first section to convey his argument. “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how's the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’” (233) This anecdote introduces the fact the many people don’t understand what is going on around them and why Wallace believes it is important to be conscious of what is happening around you. “This is not a matter of virtue- it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.” (233) Wallace argues that it is hard to get into a state of awareness because humans have their “hard-wired default-setting”. People need to get out of their own self-centered habits and see things in a different point of view. By using a humorous tone, Wallace can effectively get people on his side of the argument.

After Wallace introduces his point about everyone’s default setting, where they’re the center of the universe, he supports his idea using pathos. Wallace defines an adult’s average day, by displaying the frustration stimulated by self-centeredness. While he describes the day as an adult, he flawlessly switches to second person, placing the audience in the role of the adult. Because the audience is now in the playing the part of the frustrated adult, they can now connect whole-heartedly with the character. Most people have been in the position where the traffic causes you to be angry or the trip to the grocery store annoys you to no end, so his hypothetic story is easy to connect

David Foster Wallace wants the reader to realize that the most important and the most obvious realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Seeing what’s right in front of you can be the most difficult thing because you are always looking further and not opening your eyes to see the most obvious parts of life. Wallace is additionally trying to get the reader to tap into the real meaning of life as well as trying to move people away from their “default setting”. The opening of this speech starts out with the story of wise fish and the two young fish. After being asked about the water by the older fish, the two younger fish realize that they don’t know what water is. Fish don’t know water exists until beached;

His main method of invoking doubt about eating lobster is through employing logos. In his article, Wallace gives many scientific claims and facts surrounding the lobster. His first use of logos begins on the second page of the article where he gives the scientific names and classifications of the lobster and general information about the creature. Although it may not be obvious, by doing this he takes a step back and sees the lobster as an animal and not just a source of food. The average person probably doesn’t know much about lobsters and this provides basic information that gives the reader a basic understanding of lobsters as a living being and not just a type of

Then Wallace gives us a simple solution. Wallace's ideas and what he's asking his audience to do is that people need to make an effort to think what they think about therefore, by reprograming what we think about, we alter our mindful blind state to being aware and mindful. However, Wallace asserts, in order to rid the mind of those negative thoughts that drive us crazy he suggests, that we adjust our thinking to believe that perhaps these people are worse off than we are. Because we know nothing about them or what is going on in their lives. Therefore, by becoming aware we are able to shift our auto pilots from being mindless to mindful. This is in fact what Wallace is claiming in his speech, we are no longer in the state of what was previously blind to us rather we are able to see the world around us, we are compassionate individuals who care about the once faceless individuals that normally irritate us and cause such agony in our

In both the excerpts from David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech “This is Water” and Annie Dillard essay “Seeing”, the plots of both works focus on how we experience the world. The two works present different ways in which the world is experienced. In “This is Water”, Foster Wallace presents the idea that we are at the center of every experience, and addresses the belief that we are the most important person in our lives. In “Seeing”, Dillard discusses sight and seeing things is a crucial part of experiencing life. Both excerpts address the importance of paying attention to small details in life, however Foster Wallace focuses on paying attention to other people, while Dillard focuses on paying attention to nature.

A Rhetorical Analysis On Wallace’s “This is Water” In the speech titled, “This is Water,” David Foster Wallace gives a commencement speech to the Liberal Arts graduating class of Kenyon College. He introduces a common cliche that serves as the foundation of his speech. He asserts that a liberal arts education is not about being filled with knowledge, but rather, recognizing the value in having the advantage of being taught how to think and the necessity of this phenomenon in coming adulthood. Wallace effectively convinces his audience that the true benefit of education is being taught how to consciously choose what to think about.

David Foster Wallace’s speech “This Is Water” was spoken to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. In the speech he reflects on a unique way to think about yourself, other and the world around you. I conducted three interviews with people of different ages to see how they conform or contradict with Wallace’s speech. Martha explained how in college she was self-centered, “In college it was all about me, me, and me. And what I could get out of stuff,” (Martha Arieta). This relates to Wallace’s topic of the natural default setting. “Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor,” (Wallace pg.3). Wallace is explaining that

“This is Water” is full of rhetorical strategies, some of which can be easily missed if one is not keenly looking for their presence. Wallace’s purpose has a dramatic impact on readers in his unique strategy choice. He chose to combine parallelism and repetition. He draws our attention to the downfalls of our

Thinking that way is his “natural default setting” (This is Water). “There are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations” (Wallace). By being aware of what one thinks and feels about a situation, a person can change how they think about a situation, and they can overcome any sort of fate; “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” (Camus). As opposed to focusing on what one does not have or finding meaning in material pleasures, a person can “choose what to pay attention to and choose how you construct meaning from experience” (Wallace). Constructing meaning is “of personal, intentional choice; a conscious decision” (Wallace).

In the opening of David Foster Wallace’s speech, he talks about two young fish swimming past an older adult fish who is swimming in the opposite direction. The older fish asked them a question about the water, and yet they had no idea what water is. Wallace made an interesting point with this story by emphasizing that what is right in front of us we tend not to be conscious of it. Wallace painted a picture for the audience about two men in a bar arguing about religion. The significance to this story is that one person can interrupt the same experience or situation differently.