The speech, “This is Water”, by David Foster Wallace is one of great popularity. This commencement speech was given to college students at Kenyon College, a liberal arts school, and is admired for many reasons. The speech itself discusses a multitude of things, including the impact of education. Wallace adopts a pessimistic yet honest tone full of repetition to relate to his audience and inform them of life they have ahead. On top of rhetorical devices, Wallace uses rhetorical appeals as well to inspire his audience with the choice they have of how to deal with their future surroundings due to the education that they received.
Wallace’s use of parables allows him to create a pessimistic and very honest tone. In the beginning of the speech, he tells the story of two fish and stated, “If, at this moment, you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is to younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish” (Wallace, 2005, p.1.). From the start, Wallace tries to relate to his audience and let them know he is not there to lecture them, but instead to help them. He continues this after the parable when he stated, “A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded” (Wallace, 2005, p.2.). Through statements like these throughout the speech, Wallace helps the students understand his honesty and genuine nature. Even at the end of the piece, Wallace (2005) stated, “I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational” (p.8.). This truthful tone helps the students relate to him and begin to listen to help them advance in the world.
Rhetorical devices additionally greatly impact the tone. The diction of Wallace gives off this pessimistic and honest tone as well. Negative descriptive diction, “difficult, lame, unexciting, hideously, pissed, miserable, stupid, wasteful, selfish” add the pessimistic and negative tone. While other negative diction used when Wallace describes what the students will face such as, “voice of death, frustrating crap, cow-like” contribute to this pessimistic tone as well. This word choice helps the readers to understand that the world they are going to live in is not forgiving and is not always going to be easy.
This tone allows the reader to trust Wallace and find credibility in what he is saying to them. Wallace is an extremely truthful kind of guy- which becomes evident to the reader by the end of the piece. Statements such as, “This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface” (Wallace, 2005, p.3.), when trying to give the students insight, shows that he is being straight up with them and warning of the harsh realities to come. This ethos helps the students to listen to what’s saying and help them to understand he is ultimately there to help.
Diction and tone are not the only rhetorical devices at play, repetition additionally greatly helps Wallace inspire. The themes of there being a default setting in which all people are self-centered and the capital t- Truth of all people having a choice in how they deal with their surroundings, are constantly repeated throughout the speech. Wallace repeats the theme of self-centered people to yet again help the students become aware of the people they are going to have around them in the future. In the beginning of the speech, he states that people believe that they are, “the absolute center of the universe” and continues to state that it is, “Our own-default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth” (Wallace, 2005, p.2.). This gives the audience insight into future interactions with people and to see out of this delusional act of being self-centered. Wallace continues to bring up this theme of self-centeredness to steer the audience from being like this themselves. At one point, he states, “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 (Wallace, 2005, p.2.). He wants the readers to break free from this egotistic world in which they are soon going to live in.
The theme of capital t- Truth is additionally repeated throughout the piece. Wallace wants the readers to understand that they have a choice in how they are going to deal with this self-centered world. Throughout the speech he repeats the word “choice” helping students understand that their future is theirs and that they have the freedom to decide how they want it to be. Towards the end of the speech he states, “The only thing that’s the capital- T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it” (Wallace, 2005, p.6.). The students will have a choice of how to deal with these pessimistic surroundings that Wallace suggests there will be ahead. He ends his speech by bringing up this choice again stating, “The capital- T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head, It is about simple awareness- awareness of what is so real and essential…” (Wallace, 2005, p.8.). Awareness of the world that the students are going to live in is vital for their future suggests Wallace.
Ethos is certainly not the only rhetorical appeal at play in this speech. Wallace additionally appeals to the emotions of the audience, also known as pathos. Using parables, Wallace evokes emotions in the listeners to get his message to last. At one point, Wallace (2005) tells of how suicide victims always shoot themselves in the head and how they are typically dead long before they pull the trigger, and continues to state how education teaches, “How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely imperially alone, day in and day out” (p.3.). This dark message evokes emotion and helps his advice to avoid solitude, get across to his audience. He then goes giving a hypothetical story in which he appeals to people’s emotions putting them in a situation they could later face. He stated things such as, “you’re tired, you’re stressed out, your challenging job” (Wallace, 2005, p.3.), to help the students prepare for the future stress they may face. But at the end of this situation he stated, “the point is that petty frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in” (Wallace, 2005, p.3.). His reoccurring theme of having a choice of your future and what you pay attention to is important is repeated yet again, this time in a story with emotion to help his message last.
Wallace certainly had his audience in mind while writing this speech. Through the rhetorical devices and appeals he decided to use, the audience can tell it was surely tailored to a particular crowd. He gave the speech to a liberal arts school- one in which society often views differently from a normal college. Wallace does not ignore this, again using repetition and stating “liberal arts” multiple times throughout his speech. At one point he states, “I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about ‘teaching you how to think’ is actually shorthand for a more serious idea’” (Wallace, 2005, p.3.). Keeping the crowd of liberal arts college students in mind, he tells of how education helps the students have freedom to choose how to live their lives despite the type of schooling they receive. But, Wallace goes beyond just the students he had in the crowd- this speech extends to anyone listening. Multiple times throughout the speech he talks about how anyone can choose how they deal with these future surroundings, despite their current state.
The speech, “This is Water”, by David Foster Wallace urges the audience to use their new-found education to understand they have a choice in how they deal with the world in their future. Wallace wishes for students to see out of this so called self-centered world and inspire them to go into their future with an educated mind. This speech goes beyond just the people in the audience and extends to a larger crowd, myself included. One may wonder if this speech used enough rhetorical devices and appeals to stick with the students sitting in the crowd and how long it stayed with them. It certainly will stick with me for a good period of time.