Comparison

David Foster Wallace's commencement speech, "This is Water", and Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize Lecture spoke about how "the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about" (Wallace 1) Wallace speaks about the power of the mind and escaping the "autopilot" mode that our minds start to switch into whereas Morrison talks about the power of language and its effects on society. 

Wallace wanted the graduating students to understand that if they do not force themselves to pay attention to their lives and the decisions they make, they will soon find themselves stuck in a monotonous routine built around avoiding risks and the "hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self." (Wallace 2)

Morrison wanted the people hearing her lecture to understand that misused language and communication will seriously effect both the user and all those that use the language in a very real sense. Morrison uses the analogy of a bird's life in the hands of a child to show how the use of language, even if used carelessly and playfully, can have drastic effects life altering effects. She tells us that words are not just words and "Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge." (Morrison)

Both David Wallace and Toni Morrison wanted to warn their audiences against the abuse of some of the things they take for granted every day, their thoughts and their words. Both wanted their audiences to be aware of the effects their decisions have on others and to act with compassion towards others.

The speeches are different because Wallace focused on the positive effects of making an introspective change whereas Morrison focused on all of the negative things that are currently in our world due to people misusing language. "There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination." (Morrison)