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Isaac Iyoriobhe

Professor Gonch

ENG 101

9/11/17

This is Water

In 2005, David Foster Wallace delivered the commencement speech This is Water,

later a published essay, at Kenyon College. Throughout Wallaces essay, he claims how a

persons natural default setting makes them self-centered and slave to their mind which makes

everyday life repetitive, but when people learn how to think they will be conscious of others and

certain experiences, and can exhibit freedom from their mind making everyday life more

meaningful. Throughout the essay, Wallace elaborates on this sentiment by telling anecdotes and

giving examples in which he analyzes how they are important to his central claim.

Wallace explains how peoples natural default setting is the reason why people are so

self-centered. He describes how people never talk about being self-centered because it is socially

repulsive, yet deep down self-centeredness naturally remains apart of people. He defends this

point by stating that there is no experience that people have without themselves being the

absolute center of the experience.

Wallace believes that the liberal-arts clich of learning how to think makes people

conscious and aware of how to pay attention and construct meaning from experience (Page 3).

Wallace supports this claim by telling a hypothetical story of someone who is hungry and wants

to go home from a hard day of work, but this person is frustrated because the grocery store is

packed and traffic is bad. Wallace explains how this person is falling into their natural default
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setting by being frustrated, instead of being conscious and thinking of the fact that there are

others frustrated about being stuck in traffic and the packed grocery store.

At the end, Wallace brings the essays central idea full circle with an anecdote he begins

the essay with which explains that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the

ones that are the hardest to see and talk about, this correlating with peoples natural default

setting and learning how to be conscious and aware of situations (Page 1).