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Rhetorical Analysis Of This Is Water

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Graduating college is one of the most important moments in a person’s life. They get told at the ceremony how great they are and how life is just going to go their way. That would be true in most cases. However, David Foster Wallace had a different idea. He was going to make sure that these college graduates knew what they were getting into and was going to give them some advice. Wallace’s speech, “This is Water”, should be classified as the anti-commencement speech because he did not tell them what they wanted to hear. He instead challenged them by telling them what they needed to hear. Humans always want to hear what they want to hear. Wallace didn’t give the graduates a choice about what they wanted to hear, rather he wanted to tell them what they needed to hear. People go through the early stages of their lives being spoiled and told that they are the greatest thing in the world, but, they are the greatest only to themselves and Wallace wants people to see that. Wallace says, “our children’s children will despise us…and how spoiled and …show more content…

He does though say how there is no such thing as not worshipping. He says that people could worship money. The idea of worshipping money may sound horrible. However, it makes the most sense because worshipping money just means that people think money determines everything. This thought is factually accurate, people can’t be anything or have anything without even a little bit of money. He then goes onto say “you will never have enough” (Wallace 103). People may be nothing without money but if they worship it, even if it is everything, they will never feel that they have enough and will slowly become insane from it. Wallace uses this to make the students think about what they worship and what they truly hold closest to their ideology’s and what can keep them going even when all else seems

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