At face value David Foster Wallace’s speech could be perceived as cynical, but with a further look into it the audience can realize that he is encouraging the students, not discouraging them. Because of his impressive diction throughout the speech, Wallace is able to convey more than most authors. In David Foster Wallace's "This is Water", he uses very blunt speech and small anecdotes, or stories, in order to emphasize the importance of awareness to his audience. 

Wallace's' diction adequately serves as a tool to keep his speech to the point and focused. One example of this was when he said his speech was "...just a banal platitude…" (Wallace, xi) The use of the word "banal" stuck out to me, originally because it was a new word, but then once I looked further into it the word I realized that he was using it as irony to an extent. The claim that all commencement speeches are repetitive and useless was ironic as he is currently giving one. Wallace then acknowledges the point that his speech is to provide information to a younger generation, and that he is going to stress a specific topic, awareness. Throughout the speech he continues to use this tactic. This contributes to the theme by keeping it very straight forward the these little precautions that people of our generation are due to awareness, and this can both add to and deteriorate from our progress as a nation. It helps by not getting any one offended but can also throw us off of the path we want to be on. Wallace is bold enough to acknowledge suicide to make the point that awareness can be good or bad. He says "They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead before they pull the trigger.”(Wallace, xiii). While going to this topic can seem extreme, it serves a purpose. Adults like this are aware of their surroundings and come to the realization that they do not have anything to live for. After acknowledging this, he makes the point very clear that life gets hard. But awareness through these situations is what saves lives, awareness that life gets better, awareness that people do have reasons to live and people that love them. David Foster Wallace is very aware of what the audience wants to hear so he incorporates some of that while also getting his point across. He does this by using many short brief sentences, this helps to add to his point of clarity.

One (theoretical) story that David Foster Wallace told that stuck out to me was when he told the story of a typical day of work in the ever fearful “real world” and at the end made the comment that “The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop.” (Wallace, xiv). The aware realization that a day is going poorly can help the entire way someone approaches their life for the next couple weeks. Just blatantly exclaiming their life sucks and its always going to suck is not how a successful individual approaches life. A successful individual is aware that life has its ups and downs and that life will turn around because it always does, and proceed with a positive mentality. The day that Wallace depicts sounds terrible and horrifying, but that is the goal. He is being realistic for the students so that they are aware of these days and can have a positive outlook throughout them. 

Towards the end of his speech, David Foster Wallace gets very down to earth and acknowledges topics like worship and freedom. He suggests being aware of what you worship and that if you “Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others numb you to your own fear… But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they're unconscious. They are default settings.” (Wallace, xvi). This quote embodies the reason for Wallace stressing awareness. People fall into these obsessions and lose sight in what is really important, through awareness and introspection we can avoid this, and live a much more care free lifestyle. The last sentence of that quote struck me, while amidst all of this free choice and pro self-awareness talk, Wallace compares us to technology. Implying that we have standard “settings” this struck me as odd, because those two comparisons or almost complete opposites. Upon further inspection and closer reading the reader can understand that this analogy comes with significant meaning. He makes the point that we do not, in any way, want to be like robots because they are unaware. This is another quote that when inspected thoroughly has a completely different meaning than the original face value. 

The one excerpt from this speech that really embodies and symbolizes the overall theme comes near the end when Wallace asserts “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” (Wallace, xvi).  This quote drives home his points about awareness, freedom, and futures all in two short sentences. Because of his anecdotes and straightforwardness, David Foster Wallace produced a speech that is revered by many as the best commencement speech to date. 