On September 12th, 2009 author David Foster Wallace spent the morning compiling manuscripts for his incomplete novel The Pale King whilst his wife was away setting up her art gallery. The Pale King a novel much like Wallace’s commencement speech is a story about tedious everyday tasks adds giddy humor and enlightened comprehension to ultimately achieve an understanding about life and humanity. As said in an interview with Larry McCaffery Wallace stated “Fiction’s about what it is to be a ####ing human being”. For Wallace anything went in his writing insults, curse words, religion, and politics were all free range to write about. In a sense Wallace was down to earth. Not in that he was in touch with nature but instead acquainted with everyday life and wrote about it. Instead of distorting reality Wallace instead wrote about it and aimed to find understanding from it. While Wallace was present that day at Kenyon College to tell students about what was possible with a liberal arts education he was also there to forewarn them about what was to come. In the speech that day Wallace encouraged students to take their education and apply their knowledge to everyday endeavors and not get caught up in trivial things. Through his allegories of everyday life, clichés, and commentary Wallace rouses students to think as an individual and not let life do the thinking for them. 

Wallace in his speech uses a cliché of a fish acknowledging the existence of water. The point that Wallace is trying to establish is that one must reach an acknowledgement or understanding of life. Wallace is not the only one to see this. Henry David Thoreau established this sense of tranquility in his writing about nature and Hinduism even puts a name to it called nirvana in which a state of enlightenment is attained. The common trope of all of these is they encourage followers to seek this out; Thoreau in the outdoors, Hinduism in worship, and Wallace in education. Enforcing this idea Wallace says “a real education, which has almost nothing to do with                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness” to see the ins and outs of daily life and what it has to offer. 

Hidden within the text protrudes personal interpretations of life along with parables that seem to be told by the primary source. It is here that one learns about the gloomy side of this text. Upon listening to the speech one cannot discern these minute details only when reading the manuscript is the dismal nature unveiled. How David Wallace troubled with depression daily and was truly telling students how to avoid the grief of life’s mundane daily troubles. In the quote 

“It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.”

While this quote is heavily influenced by the subject it can be used for two important details from the text. Pertaining to his depression one can see Wallace’s struggle with depression on a personal level as his own interpretation is used here. How everyday was a struggle to stay alive and for if you didn’t “boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you”. Jealousy in Wallace’s own education also appears in that he did not take his professors and courses seriously. He wants the grads to not squander what a college education has given them. 

The detail being left out is that on the morning of September 12th, 2009 Wallace’s wife returned to that compilation of manuscripts along with the lifeless body of Wallace. The importance of leaving this out is the impact it has on meaning. In the end depression overcame Wallace. Wallace foretells of all this trouble adult life brings and forewarns of its danger, yet Wallace did not head his own advice and life’s inconveniences were the end of him. Suddenly, parables packed with meaning become causes to his fateful demise and instances where depression and suicide are mentioned now become more prevalent to the reader. The fact of his suicide does one of two things for most readers, it either enhances the meaning of the text or it destroys it. For those whose meaning is enhanced it can be said that Wallace was truly warning students about the gloom that adult life will bring. 
