Summary

This is Water was originally a commencement address given by David Foster Wallace to Kenyon College’s graduating class in May of 2005. Wallace begins the speech with a fictional anecdote about two young fish in the ocean. The fish are having a conversation when an older fish swims by and asks, “How’s the water?” (3). One of the young fish then says, “What the hell is water?” (4). Wallace states that the point of the anecdote is that “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about” (8). Wallace goes on to say that “banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance” (9). Wallace then states that one of the most common clichés stated about liberal arts educations is that receiving a liberal arts education teaches one how to think. Wallace asserts that this idea does not actually refer...