Egoistic Thought In David Foster Wallace's This Is Water

In the Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls analyzed her mother’s emotional breakdowns. In one instance, she notices “... the positive thoughts would give way to negative thoughts, and the negative thoughts seemed to swoop into her mind the way a big flock of black crows takes over the landscape, sitting thick in the trees and on the fence rails and lawns, staring at you in ominous silence” (Walls 418). Negative thoughts can consume one’s mind, whereas the positive thoughts are nugatory. The negative thoughts keep a person agonizing and stressing over it. This quote emphasizes how a negative mindset can make a person depressed or ill to be around.

Wallace shows his literary intellect in his use of the rhetorical device. He describes the nod to the opposition when he details the way we are not supposed to think by calling it our “default setting”. He starts off by saying that he would have tendencies to feel like he was the center of the world, but excuses that behavior by saying “It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth” (. The author explains the consequences of not controlling your default setting by continuing his story about the trip to the grocery store. Wallace declares “ Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don 't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I 'm

Rhetorical Analysis Essay Graduating from college is the time to begin a new chapter and change your life for the better. Commencement speeches are supposed to inspire and make graduating college students want to make that change. George Saunders gave a commencement speech at Syracuse University graduation in 2013. He carries out his speech in the traditional way but added a new twist on what is really important in life and in everyone’s career.

Bill Bryson’s essay “How You Became You” gives a brief yet entertaining narrative of the unlikeliness of the creation of the human race in order to educate the common man on the miracle of life. The rhetorical strategies used within the essay successfully allow the purpose of this piece to become accessible to the general public. Bryson seamlessly interweaves elements of tone, diction, and rhetorical appeals to ultimately create a piece that successfully achieves his purpose and leaves a lasting impact on the audience, the general populace. The tone of “How You Became You” plays an important role in the effectiveness of the essay.

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

Everyone has different interpretations on learning how to think, But I believe that David Foster Wallace’s is the closest from the commencement speech he delivered called “This is Water” his definition of “Learning how to think” is how learning is being able to exercise some control on what or how you think. Out of the whole speech that part where he speaks about it is what really grabbed my attention. Why? Because it takes me back to my sophomore year in high school and how that was the year I had decided to have a more positive outlook view towards school or in general rather than having negative ones. Further explaining my sophomore year before that I would always give up so easily when I wouldn’t understand the material, so I would just

Many people rely on the opinions of others, never truly stopping to personally consider the subject at hand. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an impactful American writer, wrote a piece entitled Self- Reliance. In Self-Reliance, Emerson’s purpose is to promote ideas of individualistic thinking. Emerson uses strong, rhetorical strategies, such as figurative language, allusions, and complex syntax and parallelism to effectively persuade his audience to trust their own thoughts.

In today’s society, self-reliance and non-conformity is an annotation on the tenets that people still value. Some people in today’s world have seemed to forgotten the ability to be content in isolation and individuality. Being true to oneself takes bravery and it compels one to be pensive and unbiased. Like Chris McCandless, he was pensive and unbiased without being thoughtless or impertinent to others. Chris McCandless was also self-reliant and did not conform, which led him to define himself of who he truly

It feels good to know that I have not fully limited myself and my thinking to that of a trapped person. According to Mills (2000), a trapped mind does not have the quality of mind essential to grasp the exchange of man and society, nor the biography and history of one’s self or the world. Writing this essay was great for me internally and was needed for me understand that social imagination is an important to personal growth. I now understand that one must have a social imagination to evolve with the changing times of this world; to understand structures of society, to deal with personal troubles, but more importantly, to break the cycle of disadvantage. For me, this means breaking the cycle of poor mindsets and lifestyles within my

Imagine being boiled alive like lobsters, “scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around” (Wallace 62). David Foster Wallace doesn’t hold back with his use of details and imagery as he engages the audience describing the Maine Lobster Festival in his article “Consider the Lobster”, which is published in Gourmet Magazine. Wallace uses the title, “Consider the Lobster” not just as the title but as his thesis. He wants to get the reader to think constantly throughout the article about the morality of eating a lobster. Wallace uses rhetoric to describe what occurs at the Maine Lobster Festival as well as the ethics of lobster eating and he does this in his article effectively.

David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech “This is Water” at Kenyon College is often thought of as one of the most influential speeches because it calls the graduates to observe the world around them through a different lens. However, he does not accomplish that by calling the graduates to action, but instead challenges them to use their education. He also appeals to the students’ emotions through his use of ethos, logos, and pathos. Although people mostly only remember the antidotes, it is the message associated with reoccurring emotions and literary devices throughout the speech that moves the reader into action. Wallace is able to captivate his audience and persuade them to view the world without themselves at the center through his tactful use of rhetoric.

The theme of the essay “Self Reliance” written by Emerson is for beings to not focus on those of others or subside his/her values to fit in with our society, for true geniuses comes from within and are made with their own heart and mind. His idea of self-reliance differs from that of the norm in that he doesn’t encourage those to mix into selfish ways but to be open and proud of their own individuality for that is the true key to life itself. Emerson’s idea is similar to the common use in that he encourages those to not depend on others to define his/her identity. 2. Emerson’s use of figurative language encourages his readers to view his ideas in a clearer and more emphasized perspective.

He told the students that if everyone would be honest with themselves and others they would admit to being self-centered egotistical jerks. He said we were born thinking that way but the good news is we can reprogram ourselves by changing our perspective on others and being empathetic to other people’s situations and feelings. Wallace also

In Mcleod’s article, it said that people “‘think about, evaluate, or perceive’ themselves” (Mcleod 1). Mcleod talks, in the article, about how people thinking, evaluating, and perceiving about themselves is call self-concept. Whenever people think about themselves, most of the time, people are confused about whether or not they are pursuing right actions for their future, especially people with low self-esteem . Furthermore, people get more confused if their actions dramatically differ from others. However, again, people’s actions determine who they are, so even if their actions are dramatically different from others, it may be a path for that person’s success.

Reflection By studying American Romanticism, we are able to learn that American literature allows its readers to understand transcendentalist views which led to individuals in American society to realize that everyone perceives the world differently. In American literature, individuals are able to understand the values of transcendentalism in which it illustrates the importance of nature, self reliance, and individuality through essays such as “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”. In Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walden” he says “ life never the bone where it is sweetest.” This quote suggests the importance of individuality due to the fact that we do not need to change to make others satisfied because we are only truly happy when we are able to accept ourselves. The best part in this unit was to look at an image and listen to the different