An Analysis of This is Water, a Commencement Speech by David Foster Wallace

Johannes:

Amongst the most famous ever given, "This is Water" was a thought-provoking. Commencement speech delivered by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. Throughout this speech, David Foster Wallace reminds the upcoming graduates of the harshness. Of the adult life, and this speech was indeed different from the more common uplifting and inspiring commencement speeches. This speech focuses on various themes, ranging from the loneliness and repetitiveness of the adult daily life to how true higher education is about us making our own daily conscious decisions and developing our mental freedom. But, the main theme of "This is Water" (Wallace) is that the speech revolves around the magnification of the importance of awareness and having the choice of seeing, thinking, and perceiving the world around us in whatever way we wish.

Marc Brisky:

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David Foster Wallace allows the reader to realize. That we all have this default setting which has been controlling the emotions during hard times for a long time. He writes: "My natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to get home... if I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do-except that thinking this way. Tends to be easy and automatic" (Wallace) By making this statement, the audience realizes that they have a default setting that they probably did not imagine. This makes them feel a little selfish because during these hard situations they can only think about themselves. The message the author attempts to send with this quote is that some of the hardest truths in life are the ones hiding directly in plain sight.

However, even though we are not always in situations that frustrate us, we as humans are told that the mindset that we inherit is what controls most of our actions. David Foster Wallace states that he adjusts his mindset by reminding himself of, "... the likelihood that everybody else in the supermarket checkout lane is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have much harder, more tedious or painful lives than I do." (Wallace) By stating this after making people realize the default setting they have installed in the body, the audience gets a feeling of self-awareness. A feeling becomes set in their minds that they can still think differently, in a way that will make difficult situations more bearable. Adding to this light of self-awareness, David Foster Wallace also explains to the audience that they should think about how other people that surround you and how you may be affected by your own mindset, created by the "default setting" that David Foster Wallace portrays. The point is that people may have a different life and mindset than your own, and realizing that and escaping your "default setting" is true awareness.

Johannes:

We all possess the true freedom to perceive our surroundings in whatever manner we wish, and this allows us to realize that we have a choice in how we think and that we are not forced to operate in our natural selfish human mindset. David Foster Wallace emphasizes this profoundly throughout his speech, for example in "The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this...and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food shop" (Wallace) which implies that each and every one of us has the freedom of choice, and situations are ultimately up to us to interpret them in whatever manner we wish. Essentially, this allows the reader to understand that it really is up to us to make situations have a positive or a negative impact on us, just because negative things happen around us doesn't mean that we should let them take a bad impact or toll on our lives.

Quinn Schroeder:

The largest and most important lesson that is to be learned in this speech is awareness and the act of realizing what is happening in the world around us. These values and these lessons appear recurrently throughout the text, especially near the end where David Foster- Wallace states that "It is about the real value of real education which has almost nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness-awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us..." (Wallace). With the use of re-imaging what education is, David Foster-Wallace is able to explain that much of the main themes and lessons can be applied differently to each and every person. But, what is believed he was trying to project, was the importance of awareness, and allowing readers to decipher that they can see the world differently. This thesis becomes increasingly prevalent as the story progresses, and there are many main points that can be made up of that suggested theme. Nevertheless, through the use of examples and theoretical situations, the main lesson or beliefs that he is trying to teach is the momentousness of perceiving the world around differently than your default setting through awareness.

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