“This is Water” is a commencement address given to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon University orated by David Foster Wallace. Wallace had a vast and intriguing career that led him to be one of the most promising and critically renowned writers of the modern era. “This is Water” conveys many meanings on the aspect of viewing other people’s lives depending on the reader’s/listener’s interpretation. However, after connecting key statements made throughout the speech one can soon trace how this speech could have been a precursor to David Wallace’s eventual suicide. Having already known Wallace committed suicide in 2008 it soon becomes quite obvious that this speech could have had an entirely different meaning to Wallace himself compared to college students about to enter the real world. One cannot claim that Wallace intended this speech to foreshadow eventual his suicide until they take an intensive look at the ironic double-sided meaning of what his parables truly meant. Through deeper analyzation of Wallace’s speech “This is Water,” the reader can tell that his talking points were derived from lessons he learned throughout his life in order to teach new college graduates that everything isn’t always as it seems. This can be analyzed through reading the text from the audience’s perspective, which helps interpret the main theme of his speech when reading it. 

Although this is opinion based, parables or analogies are often a fun and easy way to convey complex meanings to a greater audience like teaching children how it isn’t moral to lie or how genesis teaches Christians the story of creation. After a few short whimsical remarks Wallace begins his speech by telling an analogy of these fish who are oblivious to what water is. Wallace states “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 X). In plain terms this translates to the unawareness of the background of the person you pass on the street or the girl that sits in front of you on the bus. After commenting on his first story and on the average liberal arts education, Wallace dives into another “didactic little story” (XI) about a religious man and an atheist chatting at a bar. Ultimately, the atheist gets caught up in a horrible blizzard and desperately calls out for God and he is eventually saved by Eskimos randomly passing through the blizzard. The religious man viewed this as an act of God, but since the atheist didn’t physically see God save him, he remained a nonbeliever. “The exact same experience can mean two totally different thing to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience,”(XI). This is a complementary analogy of Wallace highlighting the “apparent theme” of not judging others based on first impressions or instincts because people can only experience the world through their own perspectives. This story adds a factor of being open minded to someone else’s opinions or beliefs. He describes thinking as a tool and thinking “really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think,” (XIII). This topic of thinking leads him to describing a familiar scene that relates to the “apparent theme” of experiencing life through an alternative perspective. Wallace starts off by describing the “average adult day” (XIII). You get up early in the morning go to your average nine-to-five job and after work when you’re already tired and stressed you have to attend to other responsibilities outside your job, like grocery shopping. After sitting in rush hour traffic to even get to the store, it is already swamped by the other nine-to-five commuters. After maneuvering through the populated store getting your groceries, even waiting in line to pay and talk to the overly joyful cashier in a somewhat personable voice is a strenuous task. Everyone can relate to this scenario because everyone is only worried about their own lives because of their limited perspectives. He offers to the listener/reader the question of thinking about how everyone in that grocery store has other things to attend to and is thinking the same exact thing. The philosophical Wallace relates the idea of what to think about to the “apparent theme” of viewing life from an exterior point of view and respecting that view in a way we can all relate too. 

Transitioning from the seemingly obvious meaning of the text to what Wallace could have truly meant, the reader can understand more about the message behind the speech. One particular example that could contradict the theme from the audience’s perspective reads, “If you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over made up lady who just screamed at her kids in the checkout line.”(XV). This can obviously be interpreted as a hidden indicator of what Wallace was warning us about. The speech was addressed to Kenyon College which is a liberal arts school in Ohio so it is likely that most of the graduates probably knew much about Wallace’s stature, but it is ironic that they didn’t know anything about his depression. After his death, the audience finally gets to realize Wallace’s true meaning of the parables. They translate the meaning of not knowing about other people’s backgrounds, but there was no way the audience just could have assumed he was going to commit suicide. That is why Wallace incorporates a key phrase right at the beginning of the speech “If anybody feels like perspiring, I’d advise you to go ahead because I’m sure going to,”(X) he quickly acknowledges a human trait that all humans share. The fact that we are all human and it is almost in our biology to only care about ourselves is what causes these irking situation that occur inside the grocery store. It is ingenious for Wallace to use a human’s limited perspective when giving his speech because it conveys a positive meaning for the apparent theme. This is all in spite of his internal conflicts that he is struggling with, which can also resemble the obvious meaning of the speech. Finally, one of the most important statement that he said that could have indicated his suicide was when he was talking about when humans commit suicide with a firearm they usually shoot at their head. “They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger,” (XIII). This quote lets us dive into Wallace’s head and see a better frame of how he views the human mindset. This cannot be a coincidence because depression is a brain sickness and Wallace talks about how most suicides that are committed by firearms eliminate the “terrible master”. Some would argue why would Wallace choose this particular speech out of all of his works to subliminally convey his depression; however, the opposing argument is that he draws a connection from the theme to his concealed message. This quote also verifies that he believes that the brain resembles a ticking time bomb in which depression counts down the time and suicide is the inevitable result. 

Maybe Wallace never even thought about suicide during 2005 while giving this speech or maybe he was depressed long before it, either way as you can see there are various instances where you can possibly identify his self-depression. Having said this one thing is certain, and it is, no one ever can or will find out David Foster Wallace’s true intention for the speech. The speech definitely left the graduates with something to think about in the future. Leaving the speech, the graduates were probably given a different view of the “average adult day.” After hearing about his sudden death, being liberal arts majors, could probably make the connection and realize his constant struggle with his own “terrible master.” 
