
I, for one could never imagine writing speech, let alone for graduates. Young adults have little appreciation for things, and as I read David Foster Wallace’s speech, “This is Water” I thought about my own high school graduation and the speeches I had to sit through. I remember fidgeting in my seat, checking the time on my phone, making small conversation with the person sitting next to me, really doing anything to pass the time. It would have been so much more enjoyable if the people giving the speeches had some type of hook or something to get my attention, because I feel like there was so little to appreciate, even though it probably took them hours to write the speech. 

Everyone knows how boring it is to sit through long speeches, especially if that speech is dull and hard to appreciate. David Foster Wallace seemingly recognizes this in his commencement speech and uses specific tactics so his audience can appreciate his point. Through clichés and short stories, Wallace tries to relate to his audience by familiarizing them and changing their perspectives on life. 

Wallace opens up his speech with a story about fish, which at the moment seems like it has nothing to do with a commencement speech for graduates. He doesn’t even try to lead into the story, he just simply starts by saying, “Greetings [“parents?”] and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. There are two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish…”(x, brackets included). He opens up with this short story which most likely confuses his audience as to why he would even be talking about fish. However, Wallace uses this tactic to explain to his audience the entire point of his speech before he even begins: that sometimes the most obvious things that are right in front of us are difficult to realize and understand. But this begs the question, why doesn’t he just simply say this? He introduces with a story for the same reason he uses any cliché or story throughout his speech; to familiarize the audience and make them a little more comfortable, fish swimming is an everyday situation and helps Wallace get inside his audience’s head, or as Wallace puts it, “the story [“thing”] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of genre” (x, brackets included). 

As Wallace continues with his speech, he talks about a generic cliché that he assumes his audience has heard before which gets their attention because he has brought up something familiar to his audience, ultimately making them more comfortable and willing to actually listen to what he has to say. He says, “So let’s talk about the single most generic cliché that liberal arts education is not about filling you up with knowledge but that it’s about teaching you how to think” (xi). Wallace, after already familiarizing his audience and getting them to open up to him, tries to change their perspective in the cliché itself by saying it’s not what to think but how to think it. However, upon saying this, Wallace also refers back to his story that he originally opened with, saying that, “It’s your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about the fish and the water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of totally obvious” (xi). It’s very important that Wallace mentions this, being that he wants his audience to hear the cliché about liberal arts, but at the same time wants them to know that it is up to them and is their freedom of choice to think about what they want to. This is another tactic that Wallace uses because by saying this and referring back to his first story, he is making his audience more and more comfortable, being that they now know that Wallace is not telling them what to do, he is just strongly suggesting it. 

Wallace consistently refers back to stories and clichés throughout his speech, and on the surface it seems pointless, such as the short story Wallace tells about the atheist. As he moves to his next point, he says, “Here’s another didactic little story” (xi). He proceeds to talk about an atheist that prayed to God in a time of need, but he still considers himself atheist, whereas the person he is telling this story to thinks that it is preposterous. The point of Wallace sharing this short story, he says, is because, “the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two ways of constructing means from an experience” (xi). Wallace, trying again to change his audience’s perspective, wants them to know that there are multiple perspectives on different things. Many people in the audience may agree with the so-called atheist, whereas many may agree with the so-called believer in God. Either way, Wallace explains that there are multiple different outlooks on the same experience, and that it is okay to feel this way. He explains this through a story, hoping that his audience will understand his point better. 

Wallace appears to have gotten his point across in his speech, being that all of the clichés and short stories he uses should be relatable to his audience in some way, shape or form. Some may say that it is actually genius that Wallace uses these tactics in his speech, being that Jesus Christ actually follows the same ideas, as he teaches parables to convey his message to his followers. Wallace’s ultimate goal of changing his audience’s perspectives seems to have been achieved after giving this speech. 