David Foster Wallace delivered “This is Water” as the commencement address to Kenyon College’s graduating class of 2005.  He chose to underscore the true value behind a liberal arts degree in order to make the deepest underlying connection with the newest alum of a liberal arts college.  Wallace uses severe word choice in order to highlight the austerity of an issue plaguing the human population, in hopes to inspire these recent college graduates to use their education to its full potential, beyond its degree and the career that comes with it.  This plaguing issue that he acknowledges is the “life or death importance of day to day banal platitudes.”  Throughout his address, he stresses the urgent priority that is life before death.  Wallace’s goal is to help the graduates recognize and act on the potential of their degree.  He proposes that “the real, no bullshit value of their liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous, respectable, adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to their head and to their natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.”  Though at first glance this quotation may seem dooming and utterly concerning, it is laced with hope.  The reason David Foster Wallace finds these day to day experiences to be so relevant is because the way one chooses to regularly react to everyday instances can affect the overall tone in their life.  Reacting to life in the way Wallace suggests leads to a happier lifestyle.  Fostering accepting habits reduces frustration, anger, disappointment, and even depression.  In words more simple than Wallace’s, “be a tigger, not an eeyore.”

Because David Foster Wallace’s focus throughout his address is “life before death,” when he makes reference to “going through one’s adult life dead,” he is clearly being figurative.  Various dictionary definitions of “dead” include: no longer living, deprived of life, inanimate, unresponsive, incapable of being emotionally moved, and lacking sensitivity.  These zombies, or walking dead, that Wallace refers to lack the ability to sympathize with others.  In a figurative sense, they are not living.  They are simply going through the motions, existing in the toxic cycle that Wallace labels “day in day out.”  This figurative death can be linked to mindless, ignorant people being referred to as brain dead.  One can be trapped in a day-to-day cycle of normalness and frustration through ignorance and refusal to educate oneself.  

Without self-awareness and awareness of surroundings, it is hard to appreciate the life one is living.  This disregard to one’s atmosphere is linked with the unconsciousness that Wallace encourages the graduating seniors to neglect.  Beyond the previous quote, he references the concept of consciousness verses unconsciousness multiple times throughout his address.  Wallace’s initial reference to the term conscious is in relation to how those with liberal arts degrees should learn, by “being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from it.”  Obviously he is not stating that it takes being physically awake in order to learn.  Learning requires being alert and astute.  Wallace categorizes consciousness as a choice as well as a state.  He creates a frustrating scenario that relates to basically every member of the audience: a traffic jam after a long day at work, a dreaded but necessary trip to an overcrowded grocery store, which, of course, alludes to a long line while waiting to finally get home.  He then goes to rattle off the many wretched thoughts that cross the mind of each frustrated victim to the perils of the “day in day out.”  He describes these “victims” as unconsciously believing that they are “the center of the world.”  This belief is labeled unconscious because it derives from a lack to consider those surrounding.  Wallace also recognizes that this is the default setting of every person.  Rather than fall into this default setting, he turns it to the graduates to use their liberal arts education to be more socially conscious.  He advises them to tap into their real freedom.  This freedom is being able to decide what has meaning and what does not.  He links this freedom to consciousness by describing it as “being educated and understanding how to think.”  He concludes by acknowledging the difficulty of “staying conscious and alive in the adult world, day in and day out.”

The lack of freedom that goes along with unconsciousness symbolizes being trapped.  For this reason, David Foster Wallace refers to those stuck in the emotionless day in day out as “slaves to their heads.”  His use of the term suggests his belief in the toxic behavior of those he refers to.  Literally or figuratively, a slave is one who is trapped in their current state, but being a slave does not always correspond to hours of labor in the blazing sun at the mercy of a master.  These people are living in a cycle of unentitled frustration caused by fairly minor faults, simply because they refuse to view the world in a different light.  Those who view the world as a dismal, hopeless pit of nothing but inconvenience are trapped in their own minds.  They are bound in misery by the selfish complaints of their own existence.  One becomes a slave to this cycle once they get into the mindset that “their immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.”  People often become so self-centered and absorbed by their own issues that they tend to neglect the world around them, refusing to acknowledge others with lives similar to or even more tragic than their own. Based on his theory of education as freedom, those who are close-minded are more prone to anger, frustration, disappointment, and depression.  Wallace affirms that those enslaved to their minds are in need of salvation through an opening of their mind, conscious living.

Wallace’s overall goal throughout his address is to help the graduates recognize and act on the potential of their degree and the affect it will have on their life.  He achieves this through the use of parables, threats, and inspiration of life’s potentials.  His main stress throughout his speech is the influence of day-to-day life, and how each person reacts to it.  David Foster Wallace’s analysis of positive living goes far beyond the “half empty or half full” analogy.  He encompasses all it takes to live your life before death.  He underlines the importance of sensitivity and consideration when it comes to truly living.  His speech touches on every aspect of how to avoid living life dead, unconscious, or a slave to oneself.  By being conscious, one avoids being alone.  Consciousness includes recognizing the fact that people across the globe are experiencing the same struggles, if not worse ones.  This knowledge helps those who once saw themselves as victims realize they are not alone and the universe is not picking on them.  He concludes with the advice he feels will best prepare them for their future, and leaves the decision into their hands of how they choose to live.