David Foster Wallace's Commencement Speech

In order to deliver a successful speech, there are countless qualities that must be present to reach both the emotional and logical sense within a crowd. Through the use of rhetorical strategies and by remaining credible, a speaker or an author can connect with their audience; getting them involved with their writing. In May of 2011, a man by the name of Denzel Washington used multiple rhetorical strategies to deliver a graduation speech at the University of Pennsylvania. While revealing all of the difficult times that he had gone through while in college and discovering what career he wanted to pursue, he inspired millions of people, leaving a profound effect upon the world. Now, with millions of fans, Washington is a famous actor that has starred in numerous movies such as Courage Under Fire, Crimson Tide, and Malcolm X. Washington, along with the authors: Aristotle, Peter Elbow, and Donald Murray, and many others, have made a big difference in the world, simply by using rhetorical strategies.

Wallace returns to his earlier point regarding the purpose of a liberal arts education, reiterating that teaching someone how to think is in fact more about teaching them to reject their own arrogance and to be aware of their own biases. He says that one example of the wrongness of our default train of thought is that we tend to automatically think of ourselves as the center of the universe. Continuing with his tactic of defying the graduates’ expectations, he assures them that he is not bringing this up to lecture them about virtue. He’s simply pointing out that it is natural to see the world through a “lens of self” (9), and that seeing past that lens requires a conscious

Our teacher, Mrs. Hetrick, provided the answer to our question: “These essays could have easily been generated by a computer program. They tell me nothing about yourselves; why in the world you are telling me all of this? You need to make me care about the message you are conveying, otherwise, your writing is useless.” She then told us that while we were all communicating in the proper format, we had failed to take into consideration whom our audience was. In order to truly persuade and influence our audience, we had to do more than place complicated ideas into a grammatically immaculate sentences; we need to show the audience why they should care about our writing; otherwise, they will just lose interest. I realize now that this experience provided a stable foundation for what I consider to be an example of passionate rhetorical ability, which helps me reflect on what authors Wallace deems as “good” through their rhetorical strategies.

1. David Foster Wallace opens his speech with an anecdote about fish and water. Metaphorically, what does this anecdote represent? What impact does it have when Wallace returns to the line “This is water”again at the end of the speech?

In David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech, he opens with a short parable about how a fish greets two other fishes and ask them how’s the water today, this parable introduces us to his message which is changing that default setting which is hard-wired into our brains to have a life worth living. I agree with his statement because this is’nt just the first time this formula has been brought to our attention. Many success people have said this statement in some form or fashion, we can even look at David Sedaris’s commencement speech.

One of the finest commencement speeches was given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College. Wallace’s speech can be viewed as enlightening to those who are often blindly single-minded. It forces the audience to take a look at the way they approach everyday situations, rather than being self-centered, consider others before yourself. However, many overlook Wallace’s impeccable rhetorical maneuvers, focusing on the constant clichés and fictional anecdotes used. What people don’t realize is these clichés and fictional anecdotes are what make Wallace’s speech effective and reinforce the basic principles we were taught as a child, to share and think of others before ourselves. Overlooking Wallace’s flawless technique is doing a disservice to

In David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech “This is Water”, Wallace discusses multiple aspects and instances that will come before us. To begin, Wallace’s speech elaborates to us most importantly that we are not the center of the world. For instance, Wallace states in his speech that a vast majority of the information he tends to be certain in usually results in being completely wrong. An example of this wrong highlighted in this speech is that Wallace states that everything his experience supports the belief that his self is the center of the universe. Relating this to Naikan, Naikan helps the client to consider what they have given to a specific person and what troubles they have caused them. The reason why is to consider one’s perception and the impact they have on others which is not conceived through selfish encounters. This helps Naikan clients to distinguish what positive changes they can implement after introspecting on their relationships and interactions with others.

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.

The speech “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” was spoken, by Frederick Douglas, to the supporters and abolitionists at the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Fourth of July. In his speech Frederick Douglas speaks heavily on the subject of abolitioning slavery. Frederick Douglas provides comparisons and analogies, appeals to the audience 's logic, and appeals to the audience’s emotion in order to convince the audience to more vigorously fight for the abolition of slavery.

I believe that existence is comprised of hundreds and millions of different realities intermingling and colliding into one another. I also believe that at the center of each reality there lies the individual who crafted it. Our perception of what is real and false exists solely in our own minds, and our minds are what determines the lense in which we perceive the world. Our perception is largely influenced by our psyche; how we live and think stems from our perception of the world. Our brains are directly influenced by a number of key factors, including but not limited to; societal connotations, individual experience, instinctual desires, environmental factors, and cognitive thought. These factors, as well as other conditions, are what determine our “default setting.” In his noteable “This is Water” speech, given at the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address, David Foster Wallace argues a similar idea as he explains his take on the phrase “teaching you how to think”. Through his use of relatable parables and anecdotes and repetition and reverent focus of words like “choice” and “awareness” he paints a livid picture of the use of conscious choice in our daily lives. He stresses the concept of a self centered “default setting” that comes from an individual's “blind certainty” and the repercussions that deferring to that default can have on an individual's lifestyle and fulfilment. If we are unable to recognise the water in which we dwell we will always remain unaware, stuck in an

Galileo Galilei, an Italian polymath, once said, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” After graduating college, many students feel anxious about the new chapter of their lives they’re about to begin. Students are bound by a curriculum since primary school, guidelines they conform to all their lives in order to walk across a stage with a degree in hand. However, these individuals are seldom able to explore the passions inside of them that shape their aspirations throughout their time in the education system. Instead, they reflect on their college years of staying up all night to write final papers. Finals papers students have revised and edited a multitude of times in order to produce a paper that adheres to a rubric and, once again, conforming to another set of guidelines. In Donovan Livingston’s Harvard Graduate School of Education Commencement Speech, “Lift Off”, Livingston uses rhetorical devices such as alliteration, allusion, and metaphor to reinforce his message that students should not be limited by the confines of the education system, but that the education system should be supporting and guiding students towards reaching their full potential by the time they step out into the real world.

Former President, Barack Obama, in his speech “Obama’s Commencement Address at Arizona State University”, the purpose is to convey the ideas that there is always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve. His rhetoric is so successful because of his effective use of pathos, kairos, and structure matters.

From 1954 to 1968 there was a Civil Rights movement changing African Americans rights in America. The civil right goals were to change the way blacks in America where treaded in schools, buses, bathrooms and other facility’s and to get equal rights from legislation. On January 14, 1963, Democratic Governor George Wallace was sworn in, giving his “Segregation” speech. In that same year on August 28 a man named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lead the march on Washington D.C giving the “I Have a Dream speech”. The two speeches given in 1963 coincided to the civil rights but the speeches differed in both opinion and message. To explain this in a more thorough explanation, the terms Kairos, Ethos, Logos and Pathos will be used to define each compare and contrast.

In class we were shown a recording of the speech, “A call to men”. The first thing I noticed was the title, which made me immediately assume it was going to be a female speaker that was going to speak about feminism; or something along those lines. To see a man giving the speech grabbed my attention instantly. The man giving the speech was Tony Porter, and his audience was mostly women, who made me think, “Is this guy going to be giving a speech about feminism?” While listening to his speech I felt guilty for being quick to judge, because his speech was actually about growing up as a male, and being masculine is today’s society. While Tony Porter was giving his speech, he brought up stories that without a doubt every guy in our class could relate to that left many of us saying, “Wow”.

“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