DFW

    

          David Foster Wallace’s address to the Kenyon College students had a very grim message to students. He says in his speech, “I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home.” This is describing the everyday ordeal he has to go through every day. He is telling the students that the future that they prepared for, which is supposed to be exciting and enlightening, will be boring and will consist of a routine.

        David F. Wallace also hints at the idea that “ignorance is bliss.” He states repeatedly that the liberal arts education that the students have obtained have made them “conscious” of many problems surrounding the world. He states “It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us …” Here he is talking about the automated lives that people live, and that he and other people are aware of. One specific area of the speech that further pushed the idea that ignorance is bliss is when he says “It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head.” He is stating that once people become aware of their petty boring lives, they see their end as something good. It is almost like he sees human lives the same as caged animals. They just have to eat, sleep, and keep on living.

       The fact that I knew that David F. Wallace committed suicide made me view certain aspects of the speech as a mirror to his own problems. One example of this is when he states that once a man becomes “conscious” a person has to work hard to make it “…to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot…”themselves in the head. Other ideas he throws at his audience that made me believe he was talking about his own life is that he stated that it is hard to stay conscious and alive at the same time.

       I believe David F. Wallace wants students to be prepared for the trivial lives they will lead. He wants them to understand that life will not be like a box of chocolates. This is true, and I myself think about how life will be like once I begin working a nine-to-five job, but he also misses the relationships people have between each other. He doesn’t discuss how the people you surround yourself with make a difference in your life. He only discusses the work aspect, and the routine.