In the speech, “This Is Water”, by David Foster Wallace, he is addressing the Kenyon College graduating class of 2005. His speech is intended to tell the graduates why their liberal arts degrees have more human value than actual monetary value that will be made from a job in their field. While Foster tried to make the speech seem inspirational and have a positive impact on the graduates, the speech also had many negative connotations hidden within it. Wallace is trying to say that the world is in a very bad place, bad things are always going to happen, and life will always be miserable. He gives hope to the students by telling them that if they change their thoughts, then the whole world can change and become more simple and peaceful. However, he does not seem to believe in his own words of hope, and he comes off as having a consistently negative view of people, the world, and life itself. Wallace appears to believe that he is giving false hope of life to young adults who have never truly experienced the real world by using negative scenarios, repetition, and saddening imagery.

Wallace starts his negativity early in his speech. In the beginning of the second paragraph, he states, “This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories” (X). And again in the third paragraph, Wallace says, “So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech drama” (XI). While these phrases may not appear as negative to the audience at the time, they play an important role in a point Wallace brings up later. Wallace is essentially saying that he is just following the typical rules for a commencement speech instead of setting his own path and being original. He talks about presenting himself as the wise old fish but in reality he knows he is not like that and actually knows very little about the water because he says, “I am not the wise old fish” (X).  Later, when talking about everyday life and little things that constantly happen to aggravate people, Wallace says, “But it hasn’t yet been a part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year” (XIV). In this quote, Wallace is telling the audience life is like being stuck in the same routine every day with no escape. However, Wallace tells them it is their choice of whether or not to think of the routine as a positive or negative manner and they should attempt to think on the bright side. The routine will appear new and exciting at first. This is contradicting though because Wallace makes his speech appears to be in a negative routine of repeatedly brings up topics of death and suicide within his speech. This shows that Wallace has a life much like his speech which is being stuck in a never ending routine. Everything Wallace is telling the audience are ideas that do not even work for him, so in a sense he knows that if they change their thinking about life, it will not be able to change the world in the way that many graduates believe. Wallace could increase positivity by talking of being happy for events like childbirth, marriage, buying a home…etc.

Throughout his speech, Wallace repeatedly emphasizes the idea of choice. He believes people always have the choice of how to think of certain situations, and the way they think of these situations will have an impact on how they look at life. For example, Wallace talks about a crazy grocery store checkout line at the end of the day that is extremely long and infuriating, and the lady working seems miserable. He then states that most people would just be aggravated and pissed off, or they have the option to think, “I can choose myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am” (XV). However, most people will have the self-centered attitude that the world is waiting on them, and the wait is everyone else’s fault. So if they think like that, other people will probably not and the line will still be miserable. He also states another example about getting cut off by a large SUV on the highway and how people can choose to think that the person is actually in an emergency and had a more important place to be. In reality people do not think like this, but instead think themselves are more important. Wallace says, “Except 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” (XIV). This is the default setting for everyone; that they are the center of their own universe, and they are more important than other people. So while Wallace told the graduates that if they change their thinking, it can rub off on others, and everyone will put others first all the time, he knows that this is not true. Wallace understands the default setting of people’s thoughts but gives the graduates false hope that the way the graduates think can make the world a more peaceful place and make the everyday routine of life a little better. He wants the graduates to change the way they think but is still not certain that it will occur due to judging how most of the world thinks.

I interpreted the speech as having a negative connotation because of the negative images he paints in the audience’s minds. One example is when he portrays the image of death within his speech. When he is talking about a seeing a stressed lady yell at her kids in line, he suggests that, “Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer” (XV). Wallace again brings up the worst case scenario. In this instance the scenario is more severe, and is death. Instead of saying that the lady could be stressed from something easier, he picks cancer and death. Wallace is a man with a lot of life experience, but always uses the worst case scenario in his stories. Wallace is really trying to connect with the audience on many aspects but could potentially use other methods to do so like affection and love. He is constantly putting negative images into the heads of the graduates because that what he knows life is about. It is a negative world and bad things will always happen. Wallace could have been telling the audience of events to look forward to in life in order to boost morale on top of how to cope with daily life in a positive way.

The speech by Wallace is interpreted a lot different than how it is originally told. He attempted to give positive life advice to many young adults who are about to head off into life. However, after looking deeper into the essay, Wallace gave them life advice of negativity. Wallace really tried to tell everyone life will be alright but did so in a negative manner that may point otherwise. He hinted that there is almost no escape to the harsh reality of death, negativity, and being stuck in the same routine forever. When trying to say how much a difference the graduates can make, he told them how impossible it really is.
