This is Water Analysis

"This is Water" is an essay written by David Foster Wallace. The main point of Wallace's essay is to make us the audience be more aware in general of our surroundings and have more compassion and empathy towards the people who we pass by everyday. He encourages his audience to make decisions on what to focus on and he wants his target audience to focus on life before death.

Throughout his essay/speech, Wallace integrates several real life/realistic examples in order to be able to make that connection between him and his audience. As an example, in the beginning of the story he talks about 3 fish which confuses the audience as throughout the story we struggle to find what Wallace truly means with the example of the fish. I think he tries to show an interaction between 2 average people in life and illustrate to the audience what that average mentality is like. He develops his thesis by characterizing us as being ignorant to our surroundings at times.

Throughout the rest of his essay, he consistently speaks to the audience about how we humans tend to ignore the most basic things in life and how we always tend to brush off some of the most obvious sightings in our everyday lives. I really liked the way Wallace describe the normal everyday settings and the ordinary situations we find ourselves in always and I certainly agree with the point he makes about being unable to look at these situations critically and realize what exactly is going on even though we may be thinking about what is going on around us. He portrays us as always wanting to be in the center of attention and ignoring all the moving parts that surround the "centerpiece" which in this case is us. 

Literature here is able to develop empathy overall because as an example even I started to realize about some of the common everyday situations I've been through and all that has actually been going on opposed to what I think has been going on. Wallace's example of standing in a queue and being ignorant to the lady who tells us to have a nice day after we purchase is an example of our ignorance as we don't know the subtext behind that woman and we just look at these types of situations superficially. It develops emotional intelligence mainly because of being aware of what is around us and also being able to connect with other people's situations as Wallace talks in the story about assuming what that woman working at the supermarket would actually be like.