David Foster Wallace’s speech “This is Water” argues the importance of perspective. Wallace does this by exemplifying and explaining everyday situations where someone allows their selfishness to overcome their rationality. He uses rhetorical devises such as allegory, repetition, and humor to convey his point: to become less self-centered and more aware of others and their situations.

One of his examples explains how self-centered and irrational someone can be. The person in his example looks at their day as being annoying and tedious. When they are headed home from work they constantly think about how long it is taking to get home, how everyone is in their way, and that it’s all a waste of time. “If I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks” (Wallace p.XIV) this person irrationally assumes that everyone is creating this tedious situation for them. But in reality everyone around them is experiencing the same situation and thinking about their self-centered life style. Wallace says that it is not a choice to think this way, rather it is automatic, “Thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting.” (Wallace p.XIV). At first without any thought a person can result in thinking about themselves. But they also have a choice to think differently and they do not have to be self-centered.  They can consciously try to take their wasted time in traffic or in a line and use it effectively to think about other situations than just the one they are currently experiencing. 

He utilizes repetition to emphasize how self-centered we can be. “About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home” (Wallace p.XIV). This emphasis defines how people think in a tedious situation. It is wasteful thinking and it can be avoided if a person attempts to use their experiences and perception to look at a situation differently. They can try to challenge their way of thinking and think with a higher awareness of your surroundings. A person can learn things from others by not being so self-centered and challenge their mind to see others in a different light. Everyone has different experiences throughout their life. Everyone has their own default setting and this is clear because it is natural to us. “Think about it: there is no experience you had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left and right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor.” (Wallace p.XII). The things people claim as their own such as experiences cause self-centeredness to take over their thoughts. They blame others or assume that others are the reason for them being so bored and aggravated.

Throughout the speech he uses humor to capture the audience’s attention and tell a story that reinforces his thoughts about perspective. “there are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” (Wallace p.X). The point of the story is that the two young fish don’t realize the reality around them. To them they think the water is something completely natural and that it is just present, they aren’t even aware that there is water around them. The older fish represents the people who are aware of their surroundings and look at life in a different perspective. Wallace wants people to grow past the default setting, he wants people to realize what is around us and he doesn’t want us to live an empty and repetitious life. It is not simple to live up to his expectation but it is possible if people work for it. “awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water” “This is water” It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.” (Wallace p.XVII) Being aware is not as simple as saying you will be more aware. It is a commitment to stay actively engaged in your surroundings. This is a difficult task because you have to constantly use you mind to understand that there is more than one single perspective on any situation. 

Wallace uses allegory to describe the final detail of his speech. The water represents our awareness, the water occurs at the beginning and the end of the speech, and the water is what everyone ignores when it is so commonly around us but is an important part to our everyday life. He also uses the worship of something as an allegory. He explains how worshipping something is what motivates our prospective. He also argues that it is what can hold us back from new prospective. He states within the speech that “the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings”. He is speaking of worshiping money, power, intelligence, and beauty. All those things are worships of yourself; they support self-gain. 

His speech is not about the importance of caring about others it’s about the choice to look at situations in a different perspective. He doesn’t want someone to waste their life operating in their default setting every day. He wants people to use their education to achieve a different level of thinking. “It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential” (Wallace p.XVII). He wants the audience to begin to realize what simple awareness is and how to interoperate it.

Everyone goes through life differently and they succeed and fail. It all matters what people do with themselves and how they use their skills they have learned.  It’s a waste of time to operate in a default setting and perform simple functions every day. People should challenge themselves to think at a higher level and observe the diverse situations around them. Simply walk through life aware of others and yourself. 
