Rhetorical Analysis Of This Is Water

How does Wallace use PATHOS in the speech? Provide 8 SPECIFIC examples. After each example, explain how it is an example of pathos. “The point of the fish sort is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.”

In the 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace delivered an unusual message to the graduates. He uses a unique approach to the typical conventions of a commencement speech in order to catch the attention of the graduates and to reinforce the honesty of his message. By defying their expectations, he urges them to consider their own obliviousness and to look past their own natural biases in order to see what’s truly right in front of them.

In any powerful speech, the speaker communicates and relates directly to his or her audience. Elie Wiesel does a superb job of doing this in his Perils of Indifference speech, given in April 1999. His use of pathos

Ethos is conveyed by using “my friends” to show how Wiesel is attempting to persuade the trust of the audience (Wiesel, 1999/16, p. 80). The author uses historic facts to show how much indifference there is in the world and why there is a need for vigilance in the face of evil. Pathos is pulling on one’s heart strings because it is, after all, easier to look away from one’s pain and misery and just carry on with everyday life. As Helen Keller once said, “Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.” (Simran, 2017, Random musings, para.

In David Foster Wallace’s graduation speech, This Is Water, he uses logical and emotional appeals to discuss the importance of critical thinking. Wallace uses the term “conscious” to signal critical thinkers, while those who do not think critically are referred to as “unconscious.” Wallace’s main argument is that a person has the choice to think critically and should do so every day. Wallace’s analysis of consciousness and unconsciousness focusses too heavily on the logical and emotional appeals and ignores the possible ethical arguments that support the development of conscious societies, such as activism. In doing so, Wallace favours the self-interested members of the audience and alienates those who favour altruism, limiting the

Wallace recalls the event of the boy committing suicide to prove his point that the stress of doing absolutely nothing can make a person feel like nothing. Wallace quotes, “Like most unbearably sad things, it seems incredibly elusive and complex in its causes yet simple in its effect: on board the Nadir (especially at night, when all the ship's structured fun and reassurances and gaiety ceased) I felt despair”. The cruise line promised a week of pampering, but it is not enough to save a life. He also calls the ocean a “stew of death and

“The Swimmer,” a short fiction by John Cheever, presents a theme to the reader about the unavoidable changes of life. The story focuses on the round character by the name of Neddy Merrill who is in extreme denial about the reality of his life. He has lost his youth, wealth, and family yet only at the end of the story does he develop the most by experiencing a glimpse of realization on all that he has indeed lost. In the short story “The Swimmer,” John Cheever uses point of view, setting and symbolism to show the value of true relationships and the moments of life that are taken for granted.

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 the essay Wallace uses pathos throughout the essay to appeal to his audiences emotions. The interesting aspect of the essay is that it is published in a gourmet magazine

In May of 1998, Kipland Kinkel brought a gun to his school. Over the course of two days this escalated from: being sent home, to murdering his father and mother, to murdering 2 students and wounding 26, earning a lifetime sentence of 111 years and 8 months in prison. In the court case being examined, the presiding judge addresses the original case, defendants ground for appeal, and the justification for the State’s decision to deny the appeal. Judge Haselton effectively uses ethos, logos, and pathos to support the Higher Court’s decision to deny the appeal because the original sentence was constitutional and just.

If anyone knew Paul Harvey, you could tell by his voice that he was a down to earth kind of man. He always spoke softly and with great eloquence. It was just a part of his personality. When delivering this speech, Paul was no different. He connected with the audience members and enhanced his appeals to ethos and pathos just through his language choices and tone. The speech contains anecdote after anecdote, which strengthens the rhetorical devices that make the speech’s message effective. Paul uses ethos to build up the character of the farmer and pathos to emotionally relate the farmer to each member of the audience. These tactics greatly impact Harvey’s speech.

Change is a part of human nature. We grow and learn as a society, constantly striving to become our better selves. But as we grow older, some beliefs that are inflicted upon us become written in stone. They are truths we believe, but are not always ethically and morally correct. Society becomes blinded by its traditions about how things are supposed to be done that nobody sees the pain that is being inflicted. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Johnathan Swifts, “A Modest Proposal,” persuade their audience in very different ways but are both effective in using pathos. In order to create an effective call to change, an author must use the emotions of the reader to create a need to take action.

One cannot truly change the world around without first mastering the art of looking beyond oneself and into the outside world. This idea of looking beyond oneself has been the focus of ancient and modern philosophers throughout the world. In “The Is Water”(2005), a commencement address, David Foster Wallace, a modern day philosopher, implies that people generally view the world from a selfish perspective and elaborates on how the world should work to reverse its self-centered ways. Wallace reveals his topic through a series of anecdotes, each highlighting a different way we are focused on ourselves and then providing a way to view each situation from a different perspective. Wallace’s purpose is to point out the faults in thinking only for

However, many of us live lives completely alien to one another. Whether it be a different culture, language, economic status, religion, or geographic region our lives can vary vastly and thus so can what we take for granted and how we perceive others and the world in general. Wallace goes on in his speech to illustrate a day in the life of a college-graduate white collar worker. He describes the frustrating daily grind of working eight vapid hours in a cubical, attempting to go home in an onslaught of traffic, only to realize that there is no food, leading to a frustrating drive in rush hour traffic to a packed grocery store, where one is forced to bear all the seemingly mindless almost robotic people in the seemingly infinite check-out line. Wallace reminds his audience how easy it is to feel superior in situations like this.

How hard is it to do the right thing? In the article, “The Man in the Water”, many people did the right thing right until the end. “The Man in the Water” takes place in Washington D.C., where there was a blast of winter. It was a chaotic disaster that caught the nation’s attention. In reality, not everyone is willing to be the “good guy”. Everyone have once, thought of themselves more than others but, in this article, not everyone was selfish. Not being selfish, showed heroism and bravery. In the article “The Man in the Water”, Roger Rosenblatt uses conflict and setting to develop moral courage.