This is Water - David Foster Wallace

The below post discusses David Foster Wallace‘s grand commencement speech delivered in 2005. In this speech he explores the ideology of how education can coincide with one’s ability to be more sympathetic, conscious and more adjusted to everyday life. The speech is packed with life lessons and real life experiences from David Foster Wallace himself. His humble and modest approach during the speech is what caught the attention of the graduating class of college students at Kenyon University.

He develops this thesis that life after college is dreadful, because of the detailed analysis of the average person’s routine that many of the graduates will soon be acquainted with. However, throughout his speech it is evident to see that the main idea he wants the students to grasp is that it all comes down to choice, and their decision to either be cynical or make the best out of things.

This relates to the allegory he creates at the beginning of his speech, about the three fish in a fishbowl. Where an ‘older fish swimming the other way say “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” and the two young fish say to each other “What the hell is water?” This emblem of the speech could have many different interpretations (judging from how one looks at things), but I interpreted as; the water symbolising life, the two younger fish are just average people who have a very pessimistic way of looking at life due to not being able to change their default settings as a human, and actually understanding their surroundings. While the older fish represents someone who has been educated and is able to alter his default setting to be able to sympathise, be more conscious and better adjusted to everyday life.

To make this more relatable and actually put it in perspective for the students, David Foster Wallace uses a bit of Logos in the allegory; where he made the ‘cynical’ type of fish be two in numbers, while the ‘positive’ fish is only one. This portrays that in life there are more people that are programmed to their default setting than to a setting that is ideal (ie being sympathetic, empathetic and more conscious).  

This speech accords with our inquiry question ‘How can literature develop empathy and emotional intelligence?’ Considering how David Foster Wallace suggests that with education one is able to alter their ‘default setting’, literature is just another piece of that puzzle. Since we spend so much time in characters thoughts and we a direct link to their emotions, it helps us with empathy towards people, actually sympathising with others rather than being skeptical. In addition it aids people with the ability to change their overview on life in total by being more conscious and more aware of their surroundings. By understanding that although you might be having a bad day there is always someone out there who’s going through worse. And it is completely my choice to either look past that point and continue to have the world circulate around me, or understand that and keep on reminding myself ‘This is water, this is water’.