David Foster Wallace This Is Water Summary

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In “This is Water” David Foster Wallace talks about the lack of consciousness and awareness, about how we get caught up in our heads and how liberal arts education can help students to learn how to think and have the choice of what to think about. Wallace starts by telling a story about two fish which have no idea of the substance that surrounds them: water. Wallace says that the main idea of the fish story is that the most evident things are the hardest to notice and comprehend. He encourages breaking the stereotypes and looking at the world from different angles. Wallace says that closed mindedness can make the imprisonment of the mind so extreme that even the prisoner is not aware of its condition. According to Wallace, awareness
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