This Is Water

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

This Is Water

Discussion questions on ‘This is Water’

1. David Foster Wallace’s speech is clearly crafted and yet he manages to convey sincerity. How does he manage to balance rhetorical craft with sincerity?
2. What does Wallace say about attention as a form of spirituality, and what do you think about what he says? 
   
3. If ‘worship’ is defined as attending and constructing meaning, is it true that we all worship and that choosing what to worship is one of the most important tasks of adult life? 
   

1. David Foster Wallace’s speech is clearly crafted and yet he manages to convey sincerity. How does he manage to balance rhetorical craft with sincerity?

• The rhetorical devices tend to work under the surface of the speech rather than being too obvious and merely flourishes for their own sake. They are clearly subservient to his message. Wallace’s sincerity pervades the whole thing. His use of first person when imagining the supermarket experience for example, places him in the position of a typical judgemental adult that needs to remember compassion. Perhaps it’s the sense that he is partly addressing himself in the speech that contributes to the sincere appeal, particularly through his ultimate message that “it is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.” This is a struggle he identifies with, even while he is also passing on his wisdom to the young graduates.

subservient: lling to do what other people want, or considering your wishes as less important than those of other people:

2. What does Wallace say about attention as a form of spirituality, and what do you think about what he says? 

• Wallace says that choosing to pay attention to what is happening to you and not filtering it through default cultural and egocentric lenses offers the possibility of being freer, more aware, less miserable and annoyed, and perhaps more compassionate. Wallace is almost delivering a sermon, but he emphasises his audience’s prerogative to disagree with him, bases it on the authority of his experience and the many myths and stories in which his message has been ‘codified,’ and focuses more on the form of practice than the content of belief.  

3. If ‘worship’ is defined as attending and constructing meaning, is it true that we all worship and that choosing what to worship is one of the most important tasks of adult life?

• Wallace suggests we choose something outside ourselves as a focus for attention and a way of constructing meaning. This could be a god or some set of ethical principles. He offers a pragmatic justification for this: egocentric options will cause us suffering, but the latter will help us be freer, suffer less and be more aware of others and reality. Since we do all pay attention to certain things and do tend to construct meaning, it is difficult to disagree with that aspect of his speech. His choice to define this activity as worship is interesting and provocative. Worship tends to be, in part, the ascription of highest value to the highest good or being in someone’s life, so Wallace is trying here to engage with the deepest and most important part of people’s identity. 
  

latter: near or towards the end of something: