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Analysis Of David Foster Wallace 's Speech

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Author David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech to the class of 2005 at Kenyon College centered on an atypical commencement topic; the correlation of a person’s thought process and their overall happiness. Wallace contends that the natural way in which people think, the “default-setting,” is easy and unconscious yet detrimental. An alternative way of thinking, a “well-adjusted” approach that Wallace advocates, is hard work and takes practice yet is much more constructive. Throughout the speech, Wallace juxtaposes these two ways of thinking by associating the default-setting with the idea of death, while the “well-adjusted” approach is associated with life. This highlights the monumental importance of the often overlooked notion of making a conscious decision about what and how to think.
Wallace contends that at their core, people are inherently self-centered. Whenever people are confronted with the boredom and frustrations of life, they revert back to pessimistic, self-indulgent thoughts that only leave them miserable. These thoughts are what Wallace refers to as the default-setting, the natural way in which many people interpret what happens to them. Wallace admits that it is easy and natural to think these unconscious thoughts, but they are more detrimental than people realize; getting consumed by the default-setting can be a life or death situation. Many people who commit suicide with a firearm, Wallace asserts, became a slave to their own default-setting thoughts

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