Compare and Contrast

            In the speeches “Noble Lecture” by Toni Morrison and “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace, both explain how everyone has choices to make and depending on what choice you make the outcome will differ. In the speech “Noble Lecture” Toni Morrison states, “Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decisions in your responsibility.” It is up to us as individuals and leaders to decide what we want to do with the language we are given. If we want to slander and abandon our language, that is up to us but we can also be proud of the language we are born with and use it to better the world.  In “This is Water” Wallace talks about how it is our choice if we want to change our look on the world and our attitude. “It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from your experience.” If we choose to look at the world in a different way, in a way where we are not always the center of attention we will live a less stressful, happier life. Both author explain that the choice is up to us on how we wish to live our daily lives and how we go about our routines. If we were to not wanting to change our views on how we live we will slowly die inside of ourselves and become miserable. “How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head…”

Although there are similarities between the two speeches, there are also differences. Toni Morrison is talking about how language is important and shapes who we are as a person. “it makes meaning that secures our differences, our human differences- the way in which we are like no other life.” The language we are born with, we decide what we get to do with it, however our language will always define who we are as a person. David Wallace’s speech is different than Toni Morrison’s because he is giving us a choice on how to change our attitudes and out look on the world, not a choice of language but a choice of how we view life in our heads. “This is not a matter of virtue- it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything though this lens of self.”