Heading into the next stage of life is a scary challenge for anyone. Especially those graduating college and entering unknown territory. As when anyone moves towards the next stage of life, plenty of advice is given to them to help them succeed. David Foster Wallace is one of these people as he delivers his commencement speech “This is Water” to a graduating liberal arts class. While most readers of “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace have said that this speech is about self-centeredness, a close and careful reading of this work shows that it is instead about changing your perspective and being aware of your surroundings. Wallace illustrates this meaning through his use of his own personal perspective, different parables, and through the use of real life scenarios.

Wallace’s speech is unlike any other average commencement speech. He uses a variety of tools within his speech to convey the deeper meaning of how your perspective affects your surroundings. One way he does this is sharing his own personal experiences and perspectives with the audience, adding validity and relatableness to the point he is trying to convey. For one, Wallace easily shares his own relatable experiences when it comes to self-centeredness. Wallace states in his speech, “Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence” (Wallace 3). By bringing this revelation forward to the audience he takes the first step towards making people aware of how their perspective works and how they can be aware of their actions. Wallace drives home the hard facts of how we act as humans in the world around us and actions that we take without even a second thought.. Without an outside source to give us the revelation, it is easy to continue living life without a second thought about how your perspective will impact others. Wallace continues with his observations, saying “It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self” (Wallace 3). He continues on sharing his experiences, telling the audience the efforts that he goes through to free his mind from the prison he had earlier stated it was in. This statement makes the push towards freeing our minds from where we are stuck. Through Wallace’s personal experience with his perspective he spreads his influence to encourage people to change theirs. The eloquent way he owns up to his own shortcomings when it comes to being trapped in his mind to how he pushed himself to free himself from where he was in turn helps to guide people to follow down the same path. 

Another tool that Wallace uses to help further the point of changing perspective is through his use of different parables and stories. They complement the rest of Wallace’s speech in a way that does not hinder them, but rather accentuates his points. One parable that he tells about the men in Alaska does this nicely. “But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up (Wallace 3).” The story of the men is summarized nicely by this statement. This story enforces the point of the negative roles our perspectives can take. We become so wrapped up in our own worlds that it becomes a prison that we do not even know we are in. I feel that by making this point, Wallace further drives home how we need to change our perspectives from the prison that they are stuck in. The prison of close-mindedness and selfishness that we lock ourselves up in does nothing but disconnect us from the world and weaken the bonds with everyone around us. We are made aware of this prison in hopes that it will move those who hear this speech to escape the confines that we our mind in. Besides that story, the story of the fish in the very beginning of the speech also makes an important point about our perspective. “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” (Wallace 1). The moral of this story is straight and to the point. The fish story illustrates one of the great hindrances that our trapped perspectives can cause us. Since we get so wrapped up in ourselves and what only we see, it is easy to ignore some of the most apparent things in our lives. This just contributes back to the point that our perspectives still need to be changed so we can have that awareness that the fish lack. 

One of the final factors in this speech that contribute back to the perspective change is Wallace’s stories revolving real life experiences. Through these he really is able to form a personal connection with the audience, and help them see his points through their own experiences that they have had. The best example that Wallace uses is his story that takes place in the grocery store. “It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities” (Wallace 7). This experience told by Wallace really drives the point home about how we are prisoners to our perspectives, and how we are constantly looking through the lense of our own self-centeredness. Our perspective limits our worldview, often casting many aspects of our lives in a negative light as we put ourselves before everyone else. The habits that constant put us in the center of every situation set us back, hindering the understanding and the empathy we gain from looking from someone else’s view. This whole story is a summation of how we are hurt by these facts, and explains it eloquently and in a way that can really connect with people and help them to reconsider how they see the world. The real life experience of the grocery store is helping to bring light as to how we need to change our perspectives in order to influence the world around us in a more positive way. 

In conclusion, David Foster Wallace gives us an overview of perspective and how it works and affects not only our own selves but the rest of the world as we see it. Through the use of Wallace’s own personal perspective, the use of different stories and parables, and the use of real life scenarios that are relatable to the audience, he helps to express how we are prisoners of our perspective, and the paths that we can take to break out of that prison. Wallace’s speech touches everyone who hears it, and the impact that it can have to help change our own lives is undeniable. 
