Griffiths 1

Kaytie Griffiths

Jackie Burr, Teacher

English 1010, Section 2

16 October 2018

Live Outside Yourself

In the speech ¨ This is Water,¨ the speaker talks about the fact that we have a default

setting, an automatic setting that makes us believe the world revolves around us and only us as a

person. David Foster Wallace, gave this speech with the intent to inform people of their choice to

notice those around them, to acknowledge others or to think that they are the center of the

universe. In an illustration he gives the ending is stated ¨What the hell is water?¨

He is pertaining to those who do not realize their surroundings. They do not notice what

is happening around them; they are simply there. Within this group that the speaker is directing

his speech specifically to is those who are self centered, those who only focus on themselves.

The group that he has directed to applies to all ages. In the younger ages, it is a child who

believes they get what they want when they want. For those who are teenagers, it is the one who

thinks that they know it all. They believe everybody should praise them for what they can do.

For those adults it is those who expect everyone to stay out of their way, they expect people to

know what they want. The speech connects with the audience through many different tones,

however a few stood out the few were frank, direct, persuasive, and influential tones, along with

using illustrations in order to make the audience rethink the way that they are living their life and

how they see the world around them. It makes the audience think about the others around them.
 Griffiths 2

Makes the audience rethink and wonder are they the fish in the story that don’t realize they are in

water.

Wallace’s frank tone used in his speech “This is Water” allows him to get his point across to the

audience. He is direct with his message. Allowing the audience to understand. Instead of using a

more sophisticated and complicated tone the speaker uses frank language to get straight to the

point presented in the speech. In Wallace’s speech he says:

“The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important

realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about…- but the fact is that, in the

day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance”

(1).This example of both referring back to the fish illustration and adding in a deeper

understanding as to how much the way you think and act can determine your way of life. The

speaker also uses the words “ubiquitous” and “ banal platitudes” can give us more information as

to what the speaker is trying to help us understand ubiquitous means “being present everywhere

at once.” this word suggests that as we go from our day to day life we don’t just have to be in the

one place we can keep our mind on another, on another person who could be distant but can still

be in our thoughts. The speaker is not suggesting that we figure out how to be in multiple places

at once but simply that we are not just focused on one place the whole time. The next two words

that the speaker uses in the speech are banal platitudes separately they mean to different things

but when put to together thy mean “ an obvious remark that has been repeated to often” the

speaker uses this in his speech multiple time. He repeats the word default setting multiple times

throughout his speech to help the audience understand why it is that people are so centered on

themselves rather than the world that is around them. Why people are the fish in the illustration.
 Griffiths 3

When looking closer at the speaker's word choices the audience can better understand and

conclude that which the speaker is trying to convey in his speech and message.

The use of persuasive tone in Wallace’s speech “This is Water” connects with the audience in the

sense that what the speaker is saying is influential. The speaker’s speech has the potential to

influence the way someone views their life and others in it. At the end of Wallace’s speech he

says:

“The capital-T truth is about life ​before ​death” (8). This example goes back to what he

said at the beginning of his speech about life-or-death importance. It makes the audience feel like

what they do in life really does matter, it is not just a go through each day until the end but that

life can suck but by being more open to others, being more helpful and and more considerate

can make them happier, more enlightened and in a sense free. When it come time for the end

knowing that they lived surrounded by others, that it was not just them in the center of the

universe, they lived in reality. They knew that they were in water. The speaker convinces the

audience that:

“It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out”(8).

This sentence gives the example of how it can be hard and how it can suck but as the audience

strives to try that they can be conscious and they can be alive, day in and day out. They can find

happiness in recognizing the world around them and the people that are around them. They don’t

have to be set on their default setting they can choose how to live their life before death. They

can choose to be conscious rather than unconscious. Although it will be difficult and appealing to

do. The tone and the illustrations throughout this talk are given by the speaker in order to

influence the audience and to convince that they are not the center of the universe but are
 Griffiths 4

surrounded by millions of others who are probably thinking the same thing or are going through

much worse things. The audience can make themselves known to those who also believe they are

the center of the universe.

As wallace goes on with his speech he tells yet another illustration. In this illustration he

tells us:

¨ you go to your challenging job… it's the end of the work day and traffic is bad.... You

get to the supermarket and it's crowded, everybody is in the way¨(3-4). He directs this

illustrations topic to those who have hard working, long day jobs. As well as those who have

busy lives. The illustration goes on to tell how waiting in traffic is making the day worse and

there are others who are cutting in front of the rest of the cluster of cars. As the speaker is telling

this story he adds in:

“My natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really about ​me​,

about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just go home and it’s going to seem, for all

the world like everybody else is just ​in my way”​ (5). This example shows that through everyday

life those in the audience and out in the world are thinking the same thing. Everyone in the

audience has thought that it is me, me, me and everybody is “​just in my way”​ at least once. The

speaker once again mentioned how it is a default setting to think that the world is in your way.

They the world should move for you. He later goes onto tell us how we have a choice not let our

minds think like that automatically. In his speech he says:

“The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to

see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't”(6). This means that

we get to decide how we think, decide if we are going to make our lives about ourselves, say me,
 Griffiths 5

me , me for everything that comes towards us. We get to choose whether we think people are in

our way or if perhaps they are thinking that exact same thing and we both have to move.

Allowing us to think of each other and those around us. Wallace added this last part wonderfully

to his speech:

“This is water, This is water”(8). meaning that we need to understand this is where we

are, this is reality, and we need to live outside of ourselves.

Works cited :

Wallace, David Foster. “This is Water.” Kenyon Commencement Address. Gambier, OH.21

May 2005. Speech

DSWS, July 5 2012

By. “‘This Is Water’ David Foster Wallace.” ​Vocabulary.com,​

www.vocabulary.com/lists/167540.