Graduating college is the beginning of a new life for most. They launch themselves into the work world at full speed, charging ahead to make a path for themselves. They go through their lives in the blink of an eye. Then, by the time that they have aged and are in retirement homes do they realize that they missed out the most important years of their lives because they were too focused on themselves. David Foster Wallace gives a commencement address, “This is Water”, to young graduates where through his use of the technique, capitalization, he emphasizes the importance of one’s life before death.

In the commencement address given by David Foster Wallace, Wallace chooses to capitalize certain words to drive his point, that every person should take the time to realize that they aren’t the only one in the world, home. The first example of this is about halfway through the address. Wallace states that “The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor” (XII). By capitalizing the word ‘you’ he is emphasizing how important it is for the reader, or the student he is addressing in this particular case, to be just as aware of the world around them as the world is of them. That they should “be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about” themselves and their certainties (XII). Wallace goes on to explain this idea more in depth saying that “here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive.” (XII). Which is true. In today’s society displaying self-centeredness is considered wrong, despite the fact that many people that society looks up to take this to an extreme. Wallace says all this to help the reader or student understand that learning to distinguish one’s self from the normal by changing how they view the world will make their life experiences so much greater than if they didn’t.

The second example is further along in the address, during one of his anecdotes where he is going about one of his routine trips to the grocery store. “…if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire just to get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way” (Wallace XIV). Wallace’s choice to capitalize the word ‘my’ emphasizes the fact that if he doesn’t make a conscious decision on how to think he will be sucked into the common thought; that the world revolves around him and only him. For “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. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowed parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.” (XIV-XV). Wallace is making the point that despite this being a common thought we should still try and avoid being sucked into it. “The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.” (XV).

The third example is at the end of the commencement address when he is wrapping up his point into a nicely wrapped package with a bow on top. “The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. 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 an essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over” (Wallace XVII). In Wallace’s final attempt to drive his point home he goes so far as to spell out “the capital-T Truth.” Thus, preparing the students or the reader for how important his next statement is. That statement is that “life BEFORE death” is the most important thing that any one person can have. “There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.” (XIII). And despite this that it is still so important to see the world as more than just something that is there for one person’s needs only or that it exists just to bring frustration or boredom. That is serves other purposes and that they should make a choice to try and see those purposes.  

Throughout David Foster Wallace’s commencement address he consistently capitalizes words that he hopes will drive his point further home. These words include, ‘you,’ ‘my,’ and ‘before.’ All of these words share a commonality. That being that the point in capitalizing them reinforces the idea that the world is large and the opportunities that it holds are infinite and if a person goes through their life without choosing to see the world in a way other than for their own personal benefit they are missing out on so many life experiences. Wallace finishes his commencement address with simple but powerful words, “I wish you way more than luck” (Wallace XVII). 
