Rhetoric Masterpiece: This Is Water By David Foster Wallace

This is Water: a Rhetoric Masterpiece.

David Foster Wallace delivered a surprisingly invigorating commencement speech for the Liberal Arts graduating class from Kenyon College in 2005. Wallace is famous for his novel Infinite Jest and was named one of the best authors of all time in Times magazine from the years 1995-2005. So there was no surprise, the speech was full of captivating, genius and brilliant rhetoric. I’ll already answer the question of this assignment: yes this speech was successful. Wallace himself says “I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical

The way in which he communicates the value of higher-education, of being truly aware of one's surroundings, and how to avoid one's inner “default setting” to his audience using these rhetorical techniques and literary figures of speech are what allows “This is Water” to be an extremely good piece.. I particularly liked this part of his speech, because I am someone who values higher education immensely. It was also so good, it transformed from commencement speech, to written transcript, even a well-known chain email attachment,to short film, to a book published by Little, Brown and Company called This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered On a Significant Occasion, About Living a Compassionate Life. Most commencement speeches three days in age are usually cocky, weird, boring or just the person tried to hard. The one at my brother’s graduation from the Rochester Institute of Technology this may, was absolutely pitiful let's just say..she had a bag of gumballs, and she dropped the whole bag of gumballs. My High school's speech..the kid quoted a tweet. So,“This is Water” is set apart from the rest as an incredibly effective and inspiring speech about overcoming the importance of life’s daily annoyances and becoming an aware and conscious being in a world of boredom. Maybe even boiling it down to just how

When he starts the speech off with “If anybody feels like perspiring, I’d advise you to go ahead, because I’m sure going to”, he’s already using ethos to build a rapport with his audience, as if to say: It’s okay. I’m not here to lecture you or belittle you, or to tell you how to live your life. I’m here to show you what life is really about. He begins with revealing the gimmicky genre of the commencement speech by fulfilling a “standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories”. His story is as follows: “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’”. By saying “I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about”, he is downplaying his authority. In reality he isthe “wise old fish”, so saying he isn’t is an ironic understatement. Wallace uses ethos yet again when he says “I’m not getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues”. He knows how boring