Compare and Contrast

The speech "This is Water" by David Foster Wallace and "Nobel Lecture" by Toni Morrison are similar to each other because they both express that it is up to us to interpret our lives and what we can do to live a fuller life based on how we go about changing our natural way of thinking. In "Nobel Lecture" Morrison uses the story of the blind woman and the bird to express the point of the speech. Morrison says that it is our choice, our responsibility as to whether we use our language for the good or bad of the world. Morrison wants us to use language to express ourselves instead of using violence. Morrison explains that without fully using language we become less human in how we talk along with others. In "This is Water" Wallace uses the story of the fish in the water to correlate what he means throughout the speech. Morrison says that we can learn to think that we are not the center of the world, that there are others here that are living along with us. "It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from your experience." We need to be able to live along with others and understand that it is up to us to change the way of natural way of thinking. The speeches both share ways in which we can make our lives better based on the choices we make.

There are differences between the two speeches, they have different ways in going about the choices we make. In "This is Water" Wallace explains that to change our choices are to think about others and how your choices effect them and not being so self centered in our lives.  In "Nobel Lecture" Morrison wants us to cherish our language and use it to be more human. An obvious difference is the medium in which they use to convey their message. In "This is Water" the author uses the story of fish swimming in water to show that they are apart of a bigger thing then just themselves. In "Nobel Lecture" Morrison uses the story of the blind woman and the bird to show that language is up to use to stay alive by how we should remember to live our own lives and not follow society's way of thinking.