Analysis Of David Foster Wallace's Commencement Speech At Kenyon College

On May 21, 2005 David Foster Wallace delivered the commencement address at Kenyon College to graduating seniors as a realistic look at life after college. This speech discusses the importance of having a degree and the real values of an education which is not only about the knowledge we learn but also about having a sense of awareness. Wallace’s speech also talked about the transitions we go through in our lives and how it changes our prospectives while getting more aware about the reality we live in and what makes some people feel like they are the center of the universe. Adding to that his speech simply illustrates the life of pessimists as miserable and unable to move forward as long as they lack aspirations and view things in a negative

aspect. Then he explained how we live in the pool just like fish as we jump unconsciously from a long learning process to get a decent job that won't make life much easier than we think because of all obstacles we may go through in order to survive this endless cycle of doing the same thing every single day.

However, there are many points related to life challenges and education in general that Wallace argues about in his commencement speech.

At the begining, he started his address with a short story of younger fish asking an elder fish about the water. The elder fish could 0not comprehend what the question meant or what the younger fish were talking about. Following that, Wallace said, “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”. This statement presents the main point of his speech as a whole, the fact that looking to into life from another prospective can save people from a slippery slope. Wallace follows up, “everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe”. Then he goes on the fact of believing that every situation is all about you and that every other human was created to accomplish your specific task. Wallace refers to this as a human’s “natural default setting”.To emphasize his main idea, Wallace talks about a person who had to make a late night trip to a busy grocery after a long day of work to refill his home refrigerator, and not only this person is upset because of the crowd, who in his mind holding him back from accomplishing this, but because the work and exhaustion are a daily

routine.

I agree with most of what Wallace said in his speech. It is obvious what messages Wallace is trying to deliver and he does it in a way knowing that the truth has a strong effect on people. Earning a degree is not only about having a decent job and making money. It is about what it means to you as a person and learning about yourself. In other words, knowledge is about the basic awareness and keeping our eyes open to other possibilities. As Wallace says ''That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think'', so Knowledge is power because it does help people become less absorbed and more social. Also, the environment we live in has the ability reshape our personalities and the way we treat other people to make them feel better and happier.

To sum up, Wallace’s speech talked about the transitions we go through in our lives and how it changes our prospectives while getting more aware about the reality we live in and what makes some people feel like they are the center of the universe. In the beginning, he relates to ignorance as young fish who are not aware of the water they live in and pointed to the older fish as a symbol of konwledge. The moral of that story is to say that the young fish will know about the water later on in life. All that reflected on our reality today and how the young generation know little than elders.