David Foster Wallace - the Commencement Speech What is Water - Essay Example

Taken at its core, this particular speech is an exhortation to engage with the world in which we live; not merely choosing to ignore the more frustrating, agonizing, troublesome, or difficult aspects that espouse merely due to the fact that they are uncomfortable and seemingly unstoppable. As a function of seeking to understand this particular speech and a more effective manner, the following analysis will take a nuanced approach, incorporating criticism, review, and analysis of Wallace's pronouncements in the hopes that the reader will gain a more informed understanding with respect to the approach that he champions and the relevance of the information that he presents.

Wallace starts by discussing the experience of life; exhorting the listener to “construct meaning and create relevance” from the otherwise mundane and seemingly pointless activities that all human beings, regardless of their socioeconomic status, race, or ethnic origin, must engage as a function of living. From there, the author delves into the issue of what a liberal arts education actually means; denoting that the education itself means nothing. Rather, the ultimate meaning that is derived from a liberal arts education is solely contingent upon what the individual has the potential to do with it.

However, the author strongly encourages the listener to avoid a type of arrogance; maintaining critical awareness in its stead. Whereas it is true, as Wallace states, that reality is ultimately designed with the individual experience as the only measurement through which understanding can be accomplished, seeking to define the world through such a selfish viewpoint necessarily decreases the degree of empathy and understanding that an individual might otherwise exhibit (Boswell 368).

As a function of this, Wallace encourages the individual with regards to what they should pay attention to; defining the debate within oneself and utilizing the liberal arts education as a means of affecting this. As such, not becoming detached, not refusing reality because it is painful, sad, monotonous, or mundane, and continually exercising a right and will towards thinking come to be the prime mechanisms through which Wallace's point of view can most reasonably be affected (Veggian 99). In effect, what Wallace is promoting is an understanding of the fact that thinking is a choice and should not be an automatic setting; albeit a choice that a liberal arts education necessarily encourages.

Finally, hammering this point home further, Wallace discusses the necessity of not being lulled into a complacent routine. Rather, seeking out “thinking” and utilizing the experiences and knowledge that are gained from a liberal arts education is not only an opportunity but in fact, something of a calling that each and every individual that experiences such education and can draw upon it must necessarily engage. The irony of all of this has to do with the fact that even though each of these points is effectively expounded upon by Wallace, the author and speaker himself ultimately committed suicide in 2008 (Fest 127).

Although the events surrounding his suicide remained largely misunderstood, it is the view of this particular author that Wallace was unable to ascribe to the high standard of open-mindedness, compassion, and a sense of selflessness that he promoted to the audience within the commencement address. However, this inability upon Wallace's part should not be understood as an effective dismissal of the information and key points that he presented within the commencement address. Rather, the standard that he set was so high that it is not surprising that an individual could easily fall prey to the level of selfishness and self-centered indulgence that has befallen so many great minds over the centuries. 

Ultimately, rather than merely encouraging the student body to utilize their talents as a means of enriching themselves and tangentially making the world a better place, Wallace instead encourages a continual form of thinking, analysis, consideration, and engagement as a means of utilizing the skills and approaches that a liberal arts education is able to entail. However, beyond this, Wallace also delineates the fact that even those individuals who have not been blessed with a liberal large education can utilize uniquely human desires of enrichment, betterment, and philosophical understanding to affect the same principle; once again leaving the reader/listener to come to an interpretation of the fact that the liberal arts education itself is ultimately pointless. Read More