This Is Water by David Foster Wallace is a commencement speech he told to graduating seniors at Kenyon College. He touches on many key points including living in the "real world", aka the working world and its effects on a person's life and how it is very challenging to have empathy for others because of this "default setting" almost everyone has which basically means that humans only care for themselves and it's exceptionally hard to change this default setting because the mind controls it. David Foster Wallace uses the element imagery in the text to portray his ideas that one's thoughts control how one chooses to live his or her life. 

David Foster Wallace first uses a large amount of imagery explain what the default setting is and how it makes it so hard for anyone to change their default settings. At the beginning of Wallace's speech, he brings up the concept of this default setting, and says: "We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth" (xii).  The hard-wired thought that is in our brains since birth is what Wallace calls the default setting. He uses many descriptive words to portray this self-centered way of life that almost everyone lives. Later in his speech, Wallace continues to talk about the default setting as well as a person's ability to change it and says: "Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real   you get the idea   People who can adjust their natural default-setting this way are often described as being "well adjusted," which I suggest to you is not an accidental term" (xiii). With humans own thoughts being so "immediate, urgent, real", Wallace feels this it is so extremely hard for them to switch off those thoughts and focus on others- and the people that do are considered "well adjusted". With the use of great descriptive words, Wallace is able to use the technique imagery to convey the message that this default setting most people have is centered around the point that they are all egocentric and its exceptionally difficult to change their ways to think about others. 

Wallace again uses imagery, but instead of using it to explain a persons default setting, he uses imagery to explain what adulthood can cause the brain to do. During his speech, he begins to explain this dreadful adulthood by saying: "And I submit that this is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: 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" (xiii). Wallace is trying to explain that the mind is controlling humans every move, but the control is making their lives go through boring everyday actions. Before that quotation, Wallace brings up a cliche, saying: "Think of the old cliche about 'the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master'. This, like many cliches, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger" (xiii). When he says the cliche "the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master", he is saying the mind is controlling a person to live this extremely boring life and the second part of this quotation where he is talking 

about the suicides and says that they are already dead long before it occurs, he is saying that these adults who are committing suicide are already so taken over by depression and anxiety that they are not actually living their lives to full potential and that's why their dead before they actually commit suicide. With the cliches he uses and again the descriptive words, he is able to use the technique imagery to prove his point that the mind is what really controls the body and the way people live everyday life and that it has severe negative affects on a person's life. 

David Foster Wallace performs this inspirational speech about the mind being the ultimate leader and that its hard to stray from its control- and at the end of his life he seems to follow what he says and commits suicide. He seems to believe in what he says to an extreme amount and that is how he is able to prove his point, through the technique of imagery, that the mind controls all actions including the default setting humans have as well as how adulthood becomes so repetitive that adults get into this torturous routine and soon become depressed with these everyday actions.

