Kenyon Commencement Speech Essay

David Foster Wallace brings a entirely different approach to commencement speeches in his Kenyon Commencement Speech. He strays onward from the typical commencement speech topics on extraordinary wealth, comfort, or individualized freedom (208). Instead Wallace emphasizes the real value of a liberal humanistic discipline education, which is learning how to think (199). When Wallace mentions how to think he is taking a different stance to the idea of education. He doesnt feel education should twine around the capacity to think, but rather what to think ab proscribed(199).He is trying to influence his earreach to think on a exclusively different direct. He wants mass non to see a chalk half empty or half full but both. Wallace asks of his audience to think in more ways than one. These other levels of thinking go so much further than wealth, freedom, or comfort. Although these things are nice, they can just now be given to bulk. For instance, there are many wealthy, free, and comfortable citizens in countries like the United States where some people never think on the level they could. A true education is one that creates a level of thinking and understanding apart from oneself.Read moreGood people David WallaceessayWallace emphasizes how people should carry to be conscientious of others, rather than oneself. He wants the audience, who is about to go out into the world and be the change, to stop and think, not of wealth or office, but rather of others. A number of people go though life and choose solely to think selfishly of themselves. In the end, what good does this do? There is a remissness prospect that exists within every humans mind.Wallace chooses to address the unspoken part of life including boredom, routine, and petty frustration in order to point out the default settings that occur within the mind (203). These less positive attitudes only exist within the mind, which can be altered. People have the power to control what they choose t o think about. People can consciously choose to look at situations from other points of view that stray away from this default setting. In Wallaces commencement speech, his goal is to influence people to not comfortably go through life dead or unconscious mind to the many marvelous people and things that surround them because those are the things that truly adulterate a human beings worth and meaning in life (203)