David Foster Essay

Shipping Out and Into the Heart of Darkness I was relieved when I found out in Tom Scocca’s interview with David Foster Wallace that Harper’s magazine had the writer cut in half what was a 110-page article. I enjoyed reading the magazine’s published version, but was also more than ready for the cruise and the article to end when it did. I think I was possibly feeling a little of what Wallace was feeling, which is a credit to his descriptive and precise prose. “Shipping Out: On the (nearly…

1. In David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Commencement Speech “This is Water,” he talks about a default setting, which is something people do automatically. It is the concept of going through life without actually considering what is going on around you. He gives an example about going to the grocery store and becoming irritated by a woman and her child she just screamed at in the checkout line, saying how you may think this is just an annoying experience, but when you actually become aware, your…

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…

The “Good People” by David Foster Wallace addressed a dilemma of the conflict between Christian beliefs and an unexpected pregnancy out of wedlock. Wallace introduces this situation to us through a third person narration via Lane A. Dean Jr.’s perspective of the situation. Lane and Sheri (Lane’s girlfriend who is pregnant) are sitting alone on a picnic table by the lake and trying to come to terms with the decision they have made together to abort this unwanted pregnancy. Wallace seems to…

Realness beneath the layers of cosmetic perception”. Here, DeLillo seems to be speaking passive aggressively to deliver a message to his wife that conveys that it could also happen to her, anyone to be exact. This could also be referencing the negative outcomes that accompany the desensitization of society. In the case of this sentence, it seems that the husband is instilling fear into his wife’s heart just to enjoy seeing her reaction. This somehow explains why people always have an undying…

I watched the Ted talk video, “The fascinating secret lives of giant clams” by Mei Lin Neo. This speech essentially entails information regarding giant clams, such as their basic size or growth status and most importantly how important/essential they are to their aquatic environment/ecosystem. While this speech was well presented and very informative, there are a few points in which Mei Lin Neo falls short on. Starting with her good points first, she was very confident regarding her topic, which…

Life leaves people battered with the obstacles one faces, but such experiences leave us all the wiser for it. In Elizabeth Bishop's “The Fish,” she utilizes the fish to represent how people struggle and get scarred throughout their life, but these barriers give us wisdom and courage to pick ourselves up and face what's ahead. The title of the poem is representative of the crucial nature of its central symbol, the fish while using free verse throughout one large stanza to do so; Bishop has the…

In the story "What, of This Goldfish, Would You Wish?" there is a very ambitious young man by the name of Yonatan, who was going around creating a documentary. He knocked on doors asking people what would they if they were granted three wishes by a goldfish, Yonatan went to different people different areas to get different answers. Unfortunately, Yonatan was not getting the answers he wanted, Yonatan was trying to become big in the TV world and he wanted to make this documentary poignant…

Wallace effectively led both readers on and made them think that he was bias to one side before he stated facts going each what each group believed. He managed to stay in the middle of the debate and made the readers think about why the opposite group believes what they believe. His essay is subversive by putting possible doubt in the readers mind and made them actually listen to other viewpoints. When I say “other viewpoints” I am speaking about the viewpoints of people who think it is…

The most effective device that Wallace uses is narratives and didactic stories throughout. Wallace uses many stories. At the beginning of the speech, Wallace tells the story about the older fish who swims by the young fish and asks “’Morning, boys. How’s the water?’” and the younger fish end up asking “’What the hell is water?’” (). This story is tied throughout the speech, bringing out the theme and emotions that are important. Besides just this narrative, there are stories about icemen, the…