Boredom In David Foster Wallace's This Is Water

Boredom is the feeling of lack of arousal in the world, it is the lack of feeling to engage in a topic. Some examples include David Foster Wallace’s This is Water speech, The Pale King, Soren Kierkegaard's Either/Or-Crop Rotation, and finally Terrence Mallick’s Knight of Cups. They all express boredom in different ways, explain it with different analogies and think of it differently. They see the world in the light of boredom.
In Wallace’s speech This is Water he explains that people determine their own meanings behind life. It is made by intentional choice and is a group of conscious decisions. Decisions are what make our lives have meaning. He believes that people stick by their beliefs without realizing that they can be questioned. They have blind certainty and a close mindedness, that keeps them in a subconscious confinement. It is so deep on the subconscious level, even the prisoner is not aware that they are …show more content…
In fact, he made the text of the book so dense and hard to read so that people understand what he is talking about with boredom. “And I submit that this is what the real, no-shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.” Thinking differently and positively is what makes a liberal arts education unique. By having this it is not a chore or a fear to listen to one’s head or thoughts every day. One’s internal thoughts and things that they would do instead of reading it, the instant pleasures. Wallace has many characters in his book and most of them are bullied, abused. But he then dives into their thoughts, mostly rambling pointless thoughts and reveals that they are not happy or fulfilled. They see themselves as a bully or being