David Foster Wallace delivered a now famous commencement address at Kenyon College on May 21, 2005. In this speech, he ties the value of a liberal arts education to the idea that a person can choose how to experience adult life. His theme is basically that a liberal arts education is supposed to teach a person how to think, but really it can teach a graduate how to live consciously and in awareness of the world and others around him or her. This is in contrast to the way most people live, which is really just death during life. He uses parables and examples from his own experience to illustrate that a person has to actually work to fight away from the natural urge to just be self-centered and unaware of anything that exists outside of that person’s own existence and awareness. People often don’t notice the world around them except in relation to their own small emotions and world. A person has to truly decide to control their own life or fall back into the natural state of death before death. 

There is a passage partway through the commencement address in which he says, “As I’m sure you know by know, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive…… I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think…..Think of the old cliché the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” 

Later, there is one important sentence in his commencement address that says, “The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.” He really is trying to show how you need to actually live before you die. People go through life not living. They are just alive which in his mind not the same at all. 

The key points and words that come through in these passages relate to becoming conscious. These are words that are repeated over and over again… “conscious” and “death.” 

The contrast of these words is really powerful, especially in that they are polar opposites! Through and through in the speech, David Foster Wallace repeats the main theme that a person will be just trapped into being actually dead while alive unless he or she uses the great advantage of a liberal arts education to become alive and think about other realities. Conscious can mean being the opposite of asleep or passed out. It can also mean being totally aware of what is going on around you and NOT just being obsessed with yourself. Death is a word that freaks people out. It has lots of emotion and catches attention. The repeating use of the word “death” and then the word “choice” and then the word “conscious” is really powerful. Each of these words has double or triple meanings, especially in the way they are used. 

The use of the word death repeatedly in this address is meant to catch the attention of the audience. They might be dazing off (as he references in his comment about them being caught up in their own hypnotizing monologue) but he is going to bring them to life and wake them up and hopefully make them conscious by making them aware of their CHOICE in the matter. David Foster Wallace is really clever in that he repeats the phrasing in different ways throughout the address to call attention to the agency of the graduates to choose to either live or be dead while alive based on not being conscious. 

The quote, “Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed” perfectly illustrates the main point of David Foster Wallace’s speech. He is using proper grammar and also common slang. This is actually one of the most interesting features of his speech – he veers from using very formal, upscale language and analogies to common language and even profanity. It must have been very entertaining and attention getting to be at the speech and go between the two styles. 

David Foster Wallace was speaking at a very formal and special event. Usually the speakers at commencement addresses use proper language and keep on topic and never get too informal. David Foster Wallace shook the people up by being unexpected and changing his style throughout the speech from being literary and smart to being profane and unexpected. His whole style seemed to be unexpected on purpose. 

The perfect match between the paragraph referenced above about the “liberal arts cliché” and the rest of his speech is the story of the fish swimming in water. The fish are completely unaware of their surroundings and don’t even notice that there is water at all. The older and wiser fish (like a college professor) asks the question about “how’s the water?” and the young, not-aware fish don’t have a clue. In the paragraph above, the speaker makes it clear that he wants the graduates to wake up (from death) and become conscious about their lives and choose to pay attention. 

In this address, David Foster Wallace is committed to rejecting the material signs of success and he wants to show how a change in attitude will change a person’s life. He references the old cliché of how a mind can be an excellent servant but a terrible master. That reflects the idea that a person with a good education has a choice about how to proceed in life. It makes his argument crystal clear! Every person has the choice to live consciously or to be dead even before he dies. The passage cited above is a good example of the whole theme of David Foster Wallace’s commencement address. The point of his speech was to make the graduates think about their own responsibility to lead aware lives, instead of being completely dead while alive. 
