Analysis of 'This Is Water' by David Foster Wallace

Both Sherman Alexie and Francine Prose utilize various rhetorical strategies throughout their essays to captivate their audience. However, Alexie and Prose present and use these rhetorical strategies in different ways. Prose’s essay contains different components of literary devices than Alexie’s essay. For example, one of the rhetorical methods Prose uses is to take on a certain identity to build her credibility and to strengthen her argument. While Alexie also takes on an identity to fortify his argument, it is a completely different identity than Prose. The authors both appropriate a distinctive style and rhetorical devices into their essays, which in turn create strong arguments, captivate the audience, and reveal the writer’s true thoughts and feelings.

Clear, concise, and cohesive: all necessities of an argument. Matthew Sanders, a college professor at the University of Utah, writes in his online bio that he enjoys analyzing the ways of teaching and learning, which is exactly what Sanders does in his book. In Matthew L, Sanders’ book Becoming a Learner: Realizing the Opportunity of Education he argues that college is meant to develop a person into a greater being not to teach them job skills. To develop Sanders’ claim, learning is more than just retaining facts, he correctly aligns his rhetorical situation and uses elements of generative and persuasive arguments. These techniques can include new angles, appeals, storytelling, and many other strategies to influence its readers

The general argument by David Foster Wallace in his work "This is Water" is that sometimes the most obvious realities are the hardest to comprehend. More specifically, he argues that thinking negatively is not a choice but a natural setting and we need to start thinking cognitively and outside the box. Wallace performs this speech for a group of graduating college students to prepare them for the future life they are about to embark on. He includes the grocery store example so that the reader's can connect to the story because they have gone through that situation themselves; he is trying to connect to the audience. In my opinion, this source is different from all

Near the beginning of his renowned essay, "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau appeals to his fellow citizens when he says, "...I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government." This request serves as a starting point from which the rest of "Civil Disobedience" emerges. Thoreau 's essay is particularly compelling because of its incorporation of rhetorical strategies, including the use of logos, ethos, pathos, purposive discourse, rhetorical competence and identification. I will demonstrate how each of these rhetorical techniques benefit Thoreau 's persuasive argument.

David Foster Wallace’s essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” draws on an disillusionment to the American Dream. The essay is truly captivated by Wallace’s sarcastic humor,the themes of death and despair, and the reflection of individual comparison. All in which ties into the idea of the disappointment of the American Dream.

To many, the Fourth of July was a day to celebrate the anniversary of the United States signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. However, to others it was a day to realize the injustices and brutality that many people lived in. Frederick Douglass was not only an African American political activist, but also an extraordinary speaker who desired to abolish slavery. He addressed the problem of American slavery from a slave 's point of view throughout his notorious Independence Day Speech At Rochester when he said, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.” Douglass explained from his

Emerson believes that schools are too regimented to allow students to express creativity. He believes they are too strict.

The Kenyon Commencement Speech After we graduate from high school the most common thought that we have is going into the adult world. Some of us don’t even have a clue on what the real world is about. It’s not all about testes, quizzes or exam; it’s either we get or we don’t. This speech is basically about the decision we make in our lives and we act on these decisions.

Have you ever seen a sign and scratched your head wondering what is it trying to communicate? All around the Unites States, patriotic slogans are countless and in Gary Sloan’s article “Sleuthing Patriotic Slogans,” Sloan presents readers with his thoughts concerning patriotic slogans by questioning various patriotic expressions, parsing each of the words for meaning. Sloan sparks critical thinking about various slogans through his thoughtful writing style and use of rhetorical appeals. This rhetorical analysis shows the varied degrees of success with which Sloan uses ethos, logos, and pathos: while Mr. Sloan’s credibility appeal is strong because of his teaching background and his use of logical appeal by breaking down words into meaning is difficult to argue with, his use of emotional appeal is somewhat weak. However, Sloan does not identify himself as being a part of the groups to which his pathos might appeal to, such as

If there was a way for the Mills student body to write significantly better while learning about rhetorical strategies, would you turn it down? The answer is clear, and your answer is Dave Egger's 2009 best-selling book Zeitoun. The book Zeitoun depicts Abdulrahman, the main character, as a man who lives as an average American citizen with a successful life but then struggles during Hurricane Katrina when he becomes wrongly accused of being a terrorist and lives through social injustices brought to him by the government’s enforcement. As a former reader of this book, the successful imagery and credibility that shows Zeitoun’s experience made me connect to Zeitoun on a emotional and serious level. Zeitoun is truly being portrayed as a hero in Egger's Zeitoun. However, there are more allegations to this justification.

In 2005, David foster Wallace delivered a commencement speech to the graduates of Kenyon College, in which Wallace attempted to instill in his audience the mindset needed to cope with the monotony and frustration of adult life. He stresses the importance of being “conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience”. This speech has received critical praise and recognition for being one of the best commencement speeches of all time, but does it live up in terms of rhetorical technique? Although this main message is supported by Wallace’s excellent linguistic and persuasive abilities, and more specifically his appeals to ethos and pathos, his logos lacks the concrete reasoning

“This is Water” by David Foster Wallace is the most unique and interesting graduation speeches I’ve ever read or heard of. David went to Amherst College, he majored in English and Philosophy. After he became a writer and wrote some books, he gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College on May 21st, 2005. The essay covered subjects like, “the difficulty of empathy” and “the importance of being well-adjusted”. David Wallace was a great writer and could’ve succeeded so much more books. He was able to speak on the behalf of everyman perspective. Wallace suffered from depression for about 20 years but he was taking antidepressants which were what made him productive and write these amazing novels. After him not taking the antidepressants for two

Tom Hayden, the voice behind the manifesto, was a student at the University of Michigan where the speech was given at in Port Huron, Michigan. He displays dissatisfaction and unimaginable events many young people were feeling in the 1960s. He goes on to say how we were once a nation of strength and wealth, the only with the atomic bomb at our disposal, the least scarred by modern warfare, as well an initiator of western influence throughout the world (2), as if everyone in the world wanted to be like the United States. The idea of the statement set out by Tom Hayden is to promote change and progress for the future, rather than having history re-peat itself all over again. In a period with hatred and bigotry in the south is when we as a whole

In “The Speech The Graduates Didn’t Hear,” Dr. Neusner attempted to sway his audience (the American student) into the unpleasant realization that life after college isn’t as simple as they had anticipated. Acknowledging that a majority of his audience won’t see him again, he utilized a strict, rational appeal rather than a typical inspirational speech. Despite verbally insulting his audience, his intention was to motivate and trigger a response that would yield a more industrious group of graduates. Dr. Neusner established his persona as an authoritative college professor that does not care whether his audience condemns him. He supported his manipulative speech by appealing to his audience’s emotions.

During the 1990s, David Foster Wallace wrote various, interpretive essays that represented narratives in a collection titled A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. The main essay, titled as the collection, was a thoughtful reflection of Wallace’s experience on Nadir, his first extravagant cruise. The hundred page range of the essay gives way to Wallace’s verbose quality, illustrating his commitment to recap his past experiences accompanied with in-depth analyses. Wallace’s other essays in the collection emits a similar style, with detailed descriptions of his experiences and perceptions of the world. Not all works carry those story-like qualities, but are structured as more of literary analyses presented by fluid writing. Through all of the words and subjects he writes