Comparing and Contrasting Toni Morrison's "Nobel Speech" and David Foster Wallace's "This is Water"

     Both speeches by Toni Morrison and David Foster Wallace are directed towards a large audience. Each speech was made to inspire and inform the people they were speaking to. David Foster Wallace's speech was aimed at a large senior class about to leave school and go out into the world. Toni Morrison's speech was to a much larger audience of varying ages and backgrounds.
 
     One similarity between the two speeches is they both use metaphors to get their point across. David Foster Wallace uses a metaphor about fish. An older and wiser fish ask two younger fish about how the water is and the younger fish have no idea what water is. This shows how people don't pay attention to everything around them and how they are focused more on their own selves. Toni Morrison uses the metaphor of a wise blind women, a couple of younger kids and a bird. The young children want to mess with the older women and they go up to her and ask her if the bird they hold in their hands is alive or dead. The women doesn't answer at first but after a few moments she tells the kids that whether the bird is alive or dead is completely up to them and their choices.  The bird can be interpreted to be the kids' future and that they can decide what it'll be. Each of these speeches talk about how everything is a person's choice and the consequences of those choices.

     One difference between these speeches is that Toni Morrison explains how powerful speech can be in everyday life. Everything a person says can mean way more than intended or implied. She says that "the systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, midwifery properties for menace and subjugation." Toni Morrison says that language doesn't only represent a certain action or movement but that it is that action or movement. In David Foster Wallace's speech, he emphasizes that a person's mindset is the most important. He says that a person who is in a situation and is only looking at all the negatives can just make up their mind and choose to look at the predicament in a more reasonable manner. David Foster Wallace makes this point by saying that "if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options."