To most people the word freedom has one clear meaning, which is to have the ability to act or speak without any outside restraint. This is not the case in David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water”. Wallace uses the word freedom many different times in his speech, but he uses the word in different context with different meanings. Wallace uses freedom overall as a symbol for not being so self-centered in order to obtain a real education.

David Foster Wallace appeals to the reader’s assumptions early on about the word freedom. Wallace states, “If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.” (pg. XI), using freedom with its actual definition. In this line, Wallace reminds us of our first amendment as Americans. We have the freedom of choice and to think without any outside restraints, no crap Sherlock. What Wallace is really saying is that education is a representative of your free will to think. In other words, Wallace is saying that this type of freedom gives a person the opportunity to choose what they want to learn and experience. Wallace says “the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” By saying this, Wallace reinforces the meaning of freedom as being unrestricted free choice. Freedom means the choice of what you want to learn in this context also. This use of the word freedom has a very literal meaning. 

Later in his speech, Wallace introduces a new meaning for the word freedom. This leads to the word giving people the opportunity to be more individualized. Wallace says, “Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth, comfort, and personal freedom” (pg. XVI). Freedom in this sense has been objectified along with wealth and comfort as something a person can work towards and focus on. The use of freedom here is in relation to the discussion of worship. Freedom here is describing a person’s right to worship whoever and whatever they please. While this is similar to the previous use of the word freedom, it differs because it is not just an automatic right, but rather something to obtain. Wallace says that the worship of power, sin, intelligence, sex, gods, and more are a part of societies default settings. He says that people have harnessed these forces for personal freedom, or in this context, a way to become more individualized and diversified. This use of freedom leads to more individualization because it gives people the choice to pursue whichever goals they wish to achieve. Also It allows people to live life by any set of rules or values they choose to worship. Wallace uses the word here as a method of contrasting people by what they are working towards or how they live their life. In other words, the freedom to seek and worship what they choose allows people to create differences among themselves from other people. These differences show how people experience life differently. When a person has an impactful experience in life, they learn from it and grow because of this knowledge. This knowledge is an example of a real education.

Wallace focuses a lot of his attention on talking about a real education and how to be “well-adjusted”. The key to doing this is through having personal freedom and considering possibilities more. Wallace says, “This, I submit, is the freedom of … learning how to be well-adjusted.” (pg. XV). Wallace’s purpose for saying this is that often times, people get stuck in day to day life and do not consider alternative possibilities for things happening around them. For example, he says that one could get frustrated with lines at the grocery store or traffic on the highway. If that person used their freedom of learning how to be well-adjusted – that is, to consider the possibilities going on in the life of another person – he/she would understand that his/her situation may not be as bad as initially perceived. This type of freedom describes the privilege that people have to become more considerate of those around them. This is important because having and utilizing this freedom allows people to live life extravagantly and the way they want. Basically, freedom here describes a natural privilege people have, because humans have the ability to focus their attention on whatever they please. However, where and how they focus their attention will eventually lead to the type of real world education they develop.

Next, David Foster Wallace begins to use freedom in a way less like its conventional definition. Wallace says, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” “That is real freedom” (pg. XVI). Here, freedom is used one last time with a makeshift definition attached: Wallace crafts his own meaning for the word, rather than letting it be defined by only its typical usage and meaning. Wallace, by saying “the really important kind of freedom”, suggest that the freedom to focus your attention and awareness to something other than just yourself is in a way superior to other kinds of freedom. The text says that this kind of freedom is about “being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” Wallace’s use of freedom here is opposite because typically freedom stands to describe actions with a more self-centered motive, however, here freedom stands to describe the degree at which a person can be selfless and care for others. He uses it by saying that freedom is the ability to sacrifice for others. Wallace then goes on to say that this is real freedom and the other kinds of worship and freedom are “the unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” This further supports his idea that this sacrifice form of freedom is superior to opposing forms, because he stresses the fact that the other types of freedom that he has mentioned correlate to the default setting. To Wallace, this type of freedom is the key to obtaining a real education and escaping the natural default setting. These bold statements by Wallace causes the reader to re-evaluate what they consider to be an education. Wallace makes education out to be something that is not so stern and dull like what he calls the default setting, but rather to be something that is intriguing and unique to each individual. That is why freedom is so stressed here, because it is the key to realizing that life and education are not all about following a mainstream routine. Instead, they are about being able to be more selfless and experience the world around you.

Wallace uses the word freedom in a multitude of different ways. Wallace uses the worded in different contexts and each time, the word has a different meaning or definition attached to it. The word is used more literally to describe a person’s choice of learning and growing in order to display the words true definition to compare to other uses. It is used to describe a person’s choice of worship in order to compare and contrast people by motive. Or in other words, it is used as a method of diversification. The word is also used to describe a privilege one can use to become more aware and considerate about their surroundings. Finally, Wallace uses freedom to represent an idea of sacrifice. He uses it to show that real freedom is not about being so self-centered and selfish all the time, but rather being more selfless. Wallace builds the context of the word freedom throughout the text ultimately to explain how it can be used to obtain a real education, through sacrifice and caring for others. Wallace uses freedom overall as a symbol for not being so narcissistic in order to obtain the real education he speaks of. That is the true meaning of freedom in this text. 