

In “This Is Water” I strongly believe that David Foster Wallace uses the word death to depict to the reader how we are all worried about what we have to do next in life. We do not stop and look around every once in a while at what is going on around us. Wallace additionally uses death to describe how we are self-destructive people by not allowing ourselves to live our lives to the fullest, we are slowly dying inside while living. Wallace utilizes the word death to emphasize to us that life is short. If we do not stop every now and then to realize what is around us, we can already be dead while we are still living. We must be persistent in telling ourselves that we are good enough to be alive, and we cannot let ourselves die within our own bodies before we actually pass away. 

One way Wallace uses the word death is when he describes the cashiers voice at the grocery store. Wallace depicts how we all are uninterested with communicating with one another and we have our minds set on doing a task and do not bother to look up and see what is going on around us. “…, and then get told to ‘Have a nice day’ in a voice that is the absolute voice of death, and then you have to take your creepy flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot,” (Wallace XIV). The cashier rings up an abundance of people and with each one he repeats the same three words with no meaning behind them. The cashier is going through the motions of his daily routine and not actually paying attention to the people he is ringing up. I believe in this sense Wallace is trying to tell the reader how we must not fall into the trap of not living our lives as we should be. We are depriving ourselves of the glorious things that we have the ability to gain from communicating with one another. Instead of having a conversation with the people the cashier is ringing up, he just says three words and moves on to the next customer. As growing civilians, we must try to break the routine of being only concerned about our own lives, and we need to try to engage with others around us. Wallace uses death in this quotation very specifically to tell us to live our lives to the fullest. 

Wallace also uses death to imply to the reader how he believes that we are slowly dying inside as we are still living. He describes how we are so insecure about ourselves that we never feel good enough about our looks. “Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you” (Wallace XVI). Wallace tells us that we must worship our own body, and if we do not do so we will die multiple times within our own body before we actually die. Somehow we still feel as if we are not good enough, and if we do not accept ourselves for how we look, as we age it will get even worse. We must worship our bodies, there is no need for us to be ashamed or feel insecure about the way we look, we are all the same. I firmly believe that Wallace is trying to tell us how we keep all of these insecurities bundled up inside and we never tell people how we feel about ourselves. That leading to us dying inside our own bodies multiple times while we are still alive. Wallace uses death to imply how these so called deaths are not literal deaths but they have a toll on us inside. Dying multiple times within your own body, and keeping those deaths inside will make you hate yourself until the day that you actually die. 

Another way Wallace uses death is to refer to death in the literal sense, and how we must live life to the fullest before we actually die. “The capital-T Truth is about life before death” (Wallace XVII). Wallace emphasizes to us how we must not take life for granted and that life before death is so important that we must remember how lucky we are to be alive. In this quote, death is used negatively to give the reader the sense of how we must live our lives with grace before the day comes when we cannot live anymore. Wallace wants us to realize how we go through the motions in our day to day lives and we never stop to appreciate our lives and how lucky we are to be living. We need to make a change in the way that we live our lives. Wallace uses death in this quotation as the textbook definition, the negative aspect of death. “Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning” (Wallace XI). In this quotation Wallace describes to the reader how even though we hear these repetitive statements, they can still have some importance in the way we live our lives. Reminding ourselves that there is stuff around us going on that is so obvious that we do not even realize it. We never stop to think about the little things that happen that we believe to have no meaning, but at the end of the day those are the things that mean the most. 

In “This Is Water” I firmly believe that Wallace uses the word death to describe to the reader how we never appreciate our lives. We never look and see what others are doing around us and what might be going on in their lives. We only pay attention to what is going on in our own lives and the next thing we have to get done and how fast we can get that done. I believe that Wallace uses death to emphasize to the reader how we do not take enough time while we are alive to live our lives to full potential. We do not strike up conversations with those around us, we feel insecure about ourselves, and we never think about how we precious our lives are before death. If we do not stop every once and a while and look around at what is going on around us, we will slowly die within our own bodies as we are still alive. Wallace uses death in a very specific way to show the reader his point of views on the way that we go throughout the day living our lives. 
