
In Foster's commencement speech "This is Water", he discusses the idea of conscious thought or metacognition, and creates an argument that everyone have the ability to choose what they think and must choose wisely.  The commencement speech is interrupted periodically with Foster's own side notes or commentary.  Foster uses imagery through a series of anecdotes that are arranged in order of gradual importance.  Through the use of these literary techniques Foster is able to grab the attention of and effectively convince his audience to choose how to perceive and interpret day to day occurrences. Foster uses commentary, anecdotes, and follows a specific order to persuade the reader the importance of mindful thinking and its application in life.

The use of Foster's personal commentary allows the reader to take a break from the mentally stimulating topic metacognition.  Keeping the reader from mental drainage prevents the audience from zoning out.  Not only does is prevent the reader from losing attention, but it can actually draw more attention to the speaker.  As seen in the very first sentence, he makes his own small humorous comment about nervous sweat, unrelated to the speech, which automatically grabs the readers' attention.  He goes on to say how he feels about his own speech and the typical phrases and themes that occur in them.  Most of these expressions are negative, some examples of them include: "If you're like me, you never like hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim"(Foster xi), "This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth" .  Though it may seem odd to add that opinion to his own commencement speech, he not only grabs the attention of his audience in order to state one of his key points, but he also relates to his audience as well, a powerful tool for persuasion.  Foster also uses commentary to steer the audiences thought process in the right direction.  In his first anecdote, he describes an older fish asking two younger fish how the water is, but the younger fish have no idea what water is.  He is quick to remark that the older wise fish is not a representation of himself.  He squashes any misinterpretation of his words in order to get his audience on the right path and get  them on the same page that he is.  In his second anecdote, he describes a bar scene where a Christian believer and nonbeliever argue about who really saved the nonbeliever, God or a couple of Eskimos.  After this anecdote, he tells the audience his own interpretation of the story and what the significance of it is.  Here too he also steer the audience away from misinterpretation, specifically to inform that his speech is not about virtues.  He goes on to directly tell his audience the main point or central idea of the anecdote, "This is not a matter of virtue.  It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hardwired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self."(Foster xii)  

Anecdotes are an effective literary tool to explain to the reader a point or idea that a writer wants to share.  Firstly, these anecdotes create imagery in the audiences mind.  In the first anecdote Foster uses, he colorfully illustrates a story about fish to explain his topic about the unconscious oblivion.  He is able to explain a complex idea to a diverse group of people by using a simpler means of explanation, in this case fish.  In Fosters anecdote of the "average adult day", where he describes a typical day of the average American worker, the audience can imagine the experience, not only visually but emotionally as well, they feel the resentment and frustration in the first half of the story, as well as the sympathy for others in the second half of the anecdote.  Secondly, anecdotes are a unique tool in that they can give the audience a new point of view within the story, an all omniscient perspective.  This is very fitting for this particular speech, being that its main topic is all about perspective.  Reverting back to the anecdote about the fish, the audience knows what water is, they are not oblivious to it like the fish are in his story.  It also seems a bit silly that the fish don’t know what water is, which is exactly what Foster is trying to express.  Showing the audience his point through a story gives his audience a clearer, deeper understanding of what he is trying to convey.  He later goes on to directly state the significance of the story saying "The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about."(Foster x)  Foster uses simple an entertaining anecdotes to give the reader a better understanding of a complex, and mentally challenging topic. 

Foster takes the use of his anecdotes one step further and strategically orders his stories gradually making them more emotional and more personal to covertly convince the reader.  Taking a look at the first anecdote, it is about two naive fish.  It is very passive, even a bit outlandish, but it gets the reader to think about Fosters point of conscious thought.  This first anecdote is meant to be light-hearted and whimsical in order to introduce his audience to his topic, awareness.  The second anecdote still involves a make believe story and the audience is again put into an omniscient or passive point of view.  The difference is that this anecdote is a bit more realistic involving a more normal setting and humans.  He uses this anecdote to challenge the audience as well as himself  "getting free of my natural, hardwired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self."(Foster xii).  His last anecdote is a major key to persuade his audience to use conscious awareness.  This particular anecdote is very personal.  Foster creates a common every day, real life scenario that has probably happened to or is going to happen to his audience.  It is also the most ethos rich anecdote in his speech using a lot of emotionally descriptive diction such as "hideous", "soul-killing", "junky", and "creepy" just to name a few.  Such emotional descriptions help to make the story more personal to the reader and sway his audience to not use that "default setting" that Foster had previously described.  Through this anecdote, Foster applies conscious awareness to a real life situation and shows the significant effect it can have in life. The series of anecdotes Foster uses was not haphazardly strung together, but was crafted in a particular order to intrigue and persuade the audience.  This organization technique is used as a major tool to firstly educate the audience on conscious thought, secondly, apply this idea of conscious thought to the audiences life by choosing a new perspective, and thirdly, convince the audience to utilize this choice of thought in their lives.  

Foster effectively uses comments, anecdotes and organization within his speech.  His comments keeps the audience mentally on track with his topic.  The anecdotes keep the audience engaged in his subject.  He strategically uses organization to influence the audience to use conscious awareness in their everyday life.  This in turn strengthens and supports his argument about choosing your perspective through metacognition.  