What is Water?

    This week in class we read and analyzed This is Water by David Foster Wallace. We confirmed that his targeted audience was to college students, as he refers back to his younger self that was in college. I enjoyed this piece and wanted to talk a little bit more about the “water” metaphor that Wallace used. In the beginning of the text he starts off by telling us a fable of two young fishes “swimming along”. As they are swimming they run into an older fish who says to them, “morning boys, how’s the water?” Later the young fishes contemplate, what is water? If you think about it, fishes don’t know the outside world out of their “water”. They think that the water that they live in is just normal life. My take on this is that the young fishes represent college students who haven’t gotten a taste of the real world yet, hence them being in the water still. Too add on to this, he brings up another reoccurring metaphor about your “default setting”. The meaning behind  default setting is that you are “hard-wired” to subconsciously think about yourself first as an instinct. I believe this is Wallace’s way of saying to these college students that the
I choose this image as it represents a fish who doesn’t know what the read world is like
real world is filled with mystery, as they don’t know what’s out there yet, and they might refer back to their “default setting”. But at the end he says “this is water, this is water” as reminder that life can be seen through another perspective other than your default one. (The photo down below represents a fish who has seen the real world yet)

Comments

  1. IselaSeptember 15, 2024 at 2:57 PM

    I really like how you connected the fish’s extended metaphor with the default setting to show about how they both support Wallace’s intended audience of college students. I love how you introduce his intended audience in the beginning and circle back to that too at the end of your writing!

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  2. AnonymousSeptember 15, 2024 at 3:50 PM

    I like how you talked about the meaning of water in a different way and how it connects to college students. Also I found interesting how you quotes evidence from the article to support your answers and make it more reliable. I also love how you added the default-setting metaphor and connected it to the water.

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