In his 2005 commencement speech, “This Is Water David Foster Wallace’s asserts that,
“’Learning how to think’ really means learning how to exercise some control over how
and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience” (2). Wallace uses various examples in an attempt to justify the aforementioned argument. At the end of the Wall Street Journal’s transcription of Wallace’s speech we are informed that he killed himself in the fall of 2008. Since his speech references life, death and freedom, it is not out of the question to think about the “philosophy” of the speech in relation to its creator.
Write a 4 page, essay that analyzes whether Wallace’s suicide undermines, or
confirms the central argument of his graduation speech. You must analyze the
examples he provides in his speech. Your conclusion ought to connect your
analysis of Wallace’s thinking to Murakami’s; does Murakami communicate
anything that reinforces a particular idea that Wallace stresses?