


“What the hell is water?” This is a question that a man giving a commencement speech to a group of graduating college kids is based upon. In the short story, This is Water by David Foster Wallace, a group of graduating students is listening to a man as he gives the commencement speech to them. The man is trying to explain to the students what it means to have a liberal arts degree. By looking at the stories the man giving the commencement speech gave, we can see that the way we think about life can be challenged, causing us to get a better grasp for the world around us. This is important because it forces us as students as we are entering a new chapter in our lives to change the way we think to help us succeed in our goals in life, whatever they may be. These examples the man giving the speech can be used not only for these students in the story but any who reads this short story as they progress in life. 

During the very beginning of the speech, the author uses his first story of two young fish swimming past an older wiser fish. As the older fish asks “Morning boys, How’s the Water?” The two younger fish both don’t know what the older fish means as they are not sure what water is, even though it is what they live their life in. This quick conversation is his way of telling the students to explore the world around them and don’t become complacent with what you are used to as that limits your knowledge possibilities. The man goes on to say that, “merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” The way this story helps portray his point is that it shows that we are not as smart and aware s we may think we are, and that there is always knowledge that can be gained to help us in our everyday ordeals. The authors use of the fish story is to tell the students to be aware as it will help them on in life.

Later on in his speech, a story about two men in a bar and one of their recent adventures in the Alaskan Wilderness. The story is about how one man is trapped in a blizzard threatened to die if he doesn’t receive help. Although an Atheist, the man prays to god and is rescued by passing eskimos. At the bar later on he is talking to a man and the man that the survivor is with asks him, “Well then You must believe now, after all, here you are alive.” But he is responded with “No man, all that was was a couple eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.” The reason that this story was incorporated into the speech was to explain to the students was to think about how events may happen from a different viewpoint. If you explore what is happening around you and all the reasons why things happen the way they do, you might change the way you go about your daily life and change your perspective on the world. The point the author was making with this story was to expand your horizons and not be trapped in your worlds.

The last story the author gives is of a man coming back from a day at work and how nothing seems to go your way and people are always causing you to slow down and are affecting your day. Earlier in the speech the man said that “It is our default setting, hard wired into our boards at birth” as he talks about humans thinking that the world all revolves around them. The last story then goes on to say how the man coming back from work only thinks about how people are affecting him, when if he stops and thinks, he might be more of a hindrance to someone else in a similar place as him that has a more important reason to be upset about everything around him being slow. The reason why the man giving the speech uses this story is to think about changing our perspective on life. Thinking about others first and allowing yourself to not always be self-centered could allow you to help others and in become a better person in the community around you.

A commencement speech based upon fish wondering what water is, a man saved from a blizzard by eskimos, and a man being annoyed by traffic and slow lines could seem to be one that does not seem to be one delivered to a prestigious liberal arts college class. However, this speech is very well done, as it challenges the graduating class to think about the world, something that they haven’t been able to do much of as they are attending college. The students are almost forced into thinking during the speech, something that they are intended to follow on during the rest of their lives. 

