David Wallace's Captivating Speech to Kenya College Graduates: Daring and Stirring - Essay Sample

Introduction

David Wallace's speech underscores not only an inspirational but also a witty, genuine, and insightful rhetoric. Wallace delivered the speech in 2005 at Kenya College, and it encompassed captivation for the graduating class following it's the speech's commencement that was daring and stirring with equal measures (Wallace). His audience, who were students instead of being coddled and congratulated, felt challenged by the speech. The message of the address delved on everyday issues on adult life informed by the vast majority of small choices made, coupled with the daily struggles that are responsible for the definition of people's character values. Wallace's speech, therefore, incorporated wise words on every human being's theory on simple acts from unique and exciting perspectives.

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The purpose of this article is to convince people about their choices and struggles that define their character values. Wallace's speech is based on the theory that delves in the premise that human beings for the central part of the universe. He argues that our daily choices revolve around our interests, prevalently the default settings that deny us our capability of emphasizing and in viewing scenarios existing outside ourselves. A primary aspect in Wallace's speech is necessary for battling the default selfishness in the quest of overcoming the incessant thought that our identity our victories, coupled with our shortcomings, are the essential global elements (Wallace). About Wallace's speech, he vividly appeals to his audiences on the capability of the natural human instincts in decision making with self-interest in mind. His speech albeit juxtaposes a challenging aspect that in the quest to attain a better sense of self-worth that relates to the rest of the world, then it is vital to have a battle with the instinct.

The rhetorical choices made by Wallace underscores parallelism and repetition in his speech. An instance is "...if you worship money and things ... then you will never have enough....worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid... worship intellect, you will end up feeling stupid..." (Wallace).His repetition of worship, coupled with the use of parallelism in his sentences is an appellant aspect of people aimed at mirroring the daily life routine of people. Wallace's other appeal on people is the non-interpretation of situations from instincts view as they do. That emotional appeal he furthers by according his audience by6 offering an alternative viewpoint in his commencement through repetition of his ideas, coupled with a vast majority of parallelism. Wallace presents a very vivid opinion on human instincts, which he asserts that can cause imprisonment that is unknown by making people channel their focus on the internal dialogues of the mind instead of focusing on the happenings of outside the brain. He illustrates that, by asserting that whenever people are self-centered, then there is an aspect of close-mindedness, leading to a limited meaning of experience that is subsequently responsible for their anguished and troubling situations. His persuasive techniques encompass a parable of two young fish who meet an order fish and ask them, "how is the water?" (Wallace). The parable is a clear indication that even the most noticeable actualities in the real world are always hard to observe, just like the human instinct.

Wallace's use of numerous persuasive techniques in his speech helps in building a common ground with his audiences like reputation, parallelism, and parables. His primary appeal to people is that the exercise of discipline, awareness, and compassion among each other can free human instincts from imprisonment. His use of the fish story as an actuating element on the people presents a vital reality that is often ignored, not heard of nor seen. He achieved that through building a robust relatable connection with his audience as he tells them that never perfect and is compelled to adjust to his thoughts as well. His hypothetical parables in appealing to his audience do not go unmentioned through the story of the fish and the religious man story with the atheist in explaining the existence of God (Wallace). Another hypothetical situation that he demonstrates in his speech is the stressful and tedious average daily routine of an adult life that requires a conscious decision on one's thoughts. It also needs vital elements to pay attention to, failure to which one's life may be informed by irritation and remorse.

Wallace's speech offers an explicit critique of the culture of Americans on the realms of personal obligations on facing the mutual social forces that destroy people's minds, lives, and bodies. However, the speech does have a few flaws; for instance, Wallace's assertion on the account presents an irony owing to its shaping by the cooperate interest groups. Another weakness of the speech is the speech's complication of the problems, and the solutions it offers, and the author's suicide acts on impairment of the overall message from the statement. Also, some questions in the speech remain unanswered like, the real world events can at times be more complicated than the situations described in the speech, but what should people do in the activities of natural instinctive on the events that are frustrating actualize? That is a question that Wallace fails to address his audience.

Despite the few flaws, Wallace's use of persuasive tone in his presentation of his message on the speech, coupled with his disregard of his authority and establishing a common ground with his audience, emblems his credibility in a relatable connection rebuilding. His use of repetition and parallelism, coupled with his hypothetical figurative language in describing people's frustrations and the possible experience of freedom from imprisonment, offers awareness, compassion, and discipline that people should demonstrate towards each other. The overall message reached its emotional peak following Wallace's unfortunate suicide.

Work Cited

Wallace, David. "This Is Water." Farnam Street. 2005, https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-fosterwallace-this-is-water/