
David Foster Wallace wrote his speech “This is Water” for the Kenyon College graduating class of 2005. Being a commencement speech, it was a great way for the respected speaker to share and express his values and advice to the audience, mainly focused on the graduating class of such a prestigious institution. Wallace knew this was an unusual commencement speech, but he also knew that it would be highly inspirational to not only the audience present that day, but to people hearing it in the future, as well. The beauty of this speech is that it can be applied to any young adult’s mind. It does not matter if that young adult has just graduated college and is headed into the real world or headed straight into the real world without a college education. The purpose is still the same. Wallace wanted to emphasize that higher education is to be able to make conscious decisions on how you perceive others and act appropriately in one’s everyday life. He did this by using an effective tone, extensive metaphors, and a meaningful intention, as well as using the 3 rhetorical techniques, consisting of ethos, pathos, and logos. He unites his listeners by distinguishing the “True” explanation that the real importance of an education is not about whether or not you land a good job.

The use of intention to represent pathos by Wallace in “This Is Water” is one of the reasons why the unorthodox commencement speech was so inspirational. The first case comes in the first sentence. “(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I’d advise you to go ahead, because I’m sure going to. In fact I’m gonna…)” Here, Wallace is making sure his audience realizes what he is there to do and that he is in the same boat as them. He is not going to lecture them about how they need to live their lives. Rather, his goal is to separate his idea from the real world. He continues his speech with a story about two young fish. As they are swimming, they are approached by an older fish. “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” Then he swims away. A little later, one of the young fish asks his friend: “What the hell is water?” It is hard to capture the significance of this story at first, but Wallace later adds that “I am not the wise old fish. 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.” Confusing enough, Wallace technically is the wise old fish in the real world. This specific metaphor has an ambiguous meaning. Even though he said he is not the wise old fish, he actually is so. The audience is able to pick up on it, too. He is making the speech more interesting by forcing the audience to listen and understand what he is saying rather than doze off. This affects his ethos by making him sound more credible. By devaluing his authority of being such a respected writer, he is advising the audience that he is just as educated as they are. His tone also keeps the listeners engaged in what he has to say.

Wallace used the story of the two men in the Alaskan wilderness as a great example of logos. One of the men is religious, while the other is an atheist and of course, they are arguing about the existence of God. The atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented in the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost in this blizzard...I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” So the religious man replied “Well then you must believe now. After all, here you are, alive.” But the atheist rolls his eyes and says: “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.” The logical explanation is that everyone has a different background of where they got their beliefs from that we can’t be quick to judge. As a society, we need to talk about where our beliefs come from. If someone isn’t able to defend why they believe in a certain certain thing, then they are unaware of what else they can believe in. Why believe in something when you can’t question yourself on why you believe it. Wallace is persuading the audience to believe this so we don’t end up obstinate, close-minded people. “Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad.” We can’t be automatically certain of our beliefs. People should be able to explain why. These relatable metaphors help Wallace deliver his message to the listeners through an example that they can picture. 

Wallace did an excellent job presenting the strategy of tone through pathos, especially in the story in the grocery store waiting in the checkout line. He goes back and forth from a first person view to a second person view to allow the audience to better understand the meaning of the metaphor. One quote that demonstrates the author’s tone is: “Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way...” What Wallace means to say is that you can’t judge someone by just looking at them. You don’t know what they have gone through. They may be even more stressed out than you are. “But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently...Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer.” Wallace incorporates a lot of emotion here so that the reader can relate to the point. He knows that we have all thought of people in a bad way, so using this metaphor creates a connection between Wallace’s story and the reader. The lady in the checkout line who just screamed at her kid could be having a much worse day than you, but here you are judging her on what you see at that moment.  Everyone has been frustrated at some point and, because of it, looked at someone in a cynical way. This “default setting” is what people fall into when something doesn’t go their way in their work-filled, schedule ran lives. We all are capable of controlling our actions. If we choose to think, it will pay off.

David Foster Wallace turned an unorthodox commencement speech for the Kenyon College graduating class of 2005 into an inspirational piece of rhetoric. His use of realistic examples in his side-stories allow the reader to relate and feel engaged in the text. He demonstrated his purpose through tone, elaborate metaphors, and intention, all backed up by the 3 rhetorical techniques of ethos, pathos, and logos. Wallace taught us not to stay in our default setting, but to look around and become enlightened by the fact that “this is water”. 