Question #2: Compare and Contrast

In the two speeches provided, This Is Water and The Nobel Lecture, there are both similarities and differences. Even though they are years apart they share the same concept, but also have a different standpoint. The speech given at the high school commencement, This Is Water, by David Foster Wallace starts off by explaining how easy it is to go along with our so called “default setting”. It makes our lives less challenging to worry only about ourselves. Later on in this reading he points out how “pissed and miserable” he is every time he thinks to himself that people are always in his way. To my understanding he then intends to explain how beneficial it is to develop a conscious mind, to consider what other people around him are going through. In The Nobel Lecture, Toni Morrison believes that it also destroys not to have some sort of innocent language. “Sexist language, racist language, theistic language… cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.” She backs this up with the misfortune of the collapse of the Tower of Babel, where she reiterates that if only the architectures took the time to understand other languages and have other opinions they could have constructed it without any problems.

As mentioned earlier, Wallace talks about our “default setting”, something we were born with. He thinks that our gathered thoughts about ourselves are based on how we believe that we’re the center of the world. Whereas in The Nobel Lecture, Morrison goes on about how culture can cultivate the way we use language. While Wallace stresses about it should be in our nature to consider language, Morrison trusts that we develop this concept: language.