Pathos And Ethos In David Foster Wallace's Commencement Speech

A David Foster Wallace address in his commencement speech the desire to have a fulfilled life involves “attention, awareness, discipline and effort” (Wallace 2005) opposed to a life of self-centeredness through the methods of logos, pathos and ethos. He uses simple logical reasoning for how to live happily such as refraining from worshiping features of humans. He also ensures the audiences trust in his character (ethos) by placing himself as an equal struggling with the same problem of staying an active citizen. He emphasises his idea particularly though with pathos presented in his analogies, anecdotes, tone and hyperboles. By centralizing his speech with pathos, Wallace ensures that his simple message is placed in long term memory because

The young fish mentioned represent that the “most profound realities of life are the most difficult to see or talk about” (Fairhurst, 2001, p.xiii) demonstrating Wallace’s point that we must be continuously active in important aspects of life. At first glimpse this analogy seems to loosen the tension and start the speech on good terms but once coming back to this idea it is frightening that this is “a great and terrible truth”(Wallace 2007). Connecting back to the idea of being attentive if wanting a fulfilled life, this analogy goes perfectly as those who remain in the “default” (Wallace 2005) setting do not need to understand the message behind the analogy and can only see the human, but those who want to go forward will look closer at the function of the words and understand the

During this short story Wallace uses words with strong connotation leading to a frantic frustrated feeling as he guides the audience through the story. Detail rich words including “crowded, hideously, soul-killing, over lit, glacially slow, spacey, infuriating” (Wallace 2005) forces the audience to experience this same moment as this is a universal feeling whether it happened in the grocery store and not but you are now successfully worked up. Then Wallace shifts to using words of sympathy such as “little child, legitimate fear, tedious and painful lives, dying, low-wage” (Wallace 2005) forcing the audience to examine their personal feelings and whether they are justified or not. He continues to romantizes the practise of handling the situation with compassion and kindness as they are “not only meaningful but sacred” (Wallace 2005) emphasising the change of emotion resulting in viewing the world this way. Wallace effectively places certain emotion (fear and encouragement) in particular times to ensure the most sincere feelings: the use of