David Foster Wallace Kenyon Commencement Speech

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The Effective Power of Wallace’s Speech
When I first read David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon Commencement speech, I instantly gained a reaction from it. What struck me the most was the way that I felt, I had actually had a connection with what he was talking about. I felt as if I had actually been in the audience and was sitting right below him listening to every ounce of word he was saying. His sole purpose in his speech was to introduce and redefine what education was. Not only did he make his point across through his speech thoroughly but the way he did it with his choice of words, tone, and style were what impressed me the most. Wallace uses a tremendous use of examples to portray his message, for example he uses many analogies that a reader …show more content…

Back to Wallace’s sole purpose about choosing what to overlook and how to overlook it I think it gave me a sense that many of us are so blind to the world around us. He was effective enough to demonstrate what the actual quote of “think before you speak” means. His speech positively had an effect on me, it was a broad topic yet somehow he seemed to expand it in a way where I thoroughly thought about how I lived my life. Was I oblivious to the things and people around me? When I questioned myself I knew that David Wallace’s Kenyon Commencement speech was effective because it spoke to me. Yet when I thought about how Dyer had made me feel, it had just made me feel like I wanted to be angry at the world for something I really shouldn’t be angry about. I did not like the negative effect I got from Dyer’s essay because it made me question whether he had real meaningful intentions with the world around him. What pushed to compare both articles and say that one was better than the other in the end was that one had more of a logical purpose. Wallace’s thoughts seeped through every word that he had said because he made me understand that it’s not about receiving wisdom but knowing how to use

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