Compare-Contrast


Often in life we are posed with the question, what if? What if you could change the way that your life turned out, just by looking at things in a different perspective? The authors of both, This Is Water and Nobel Lecture, go into great detail about how to choose the way your life pans out, and how to look at life in a different way, although the two also contrast in the way that they convey their message to their audience.

In This Is Life, Wallace has one main concept: perspective. Throughout his entire commencement speech he says if you choose to look at life in a different way, it is possible to change your "default setting". He then goes into multiple examples of how in everyday life we are posed with the question "why do we think the way we do?" In his speech he makes you question the way you treat others and how to look at another person's perspective. Ultimately, his main purpose for writing the speech was to make his audience think about the way they live their lives. In contrast, Toni Morrison's Nobel Lecture speaks about the importance of language and the way it is perceived. She talks about how important it is to carry on the "language" or knowledge that you gain throughout life and the importance of that. The difference is that in Morrison's speech her purpose for the audience was to empower them to fix the broken parts of language in the world today. She challenges her audience to rise above oppressive language, and do what they can to rid of it completely.

In both This Is Life and Nobel Lecture, the authors come to the same conclusion. Ultimately they both agree that what happens in an individual's life is up to the individual. Every person has their own mind and it is up to them to use it.