Emotional Intelligence

In David Foster Wallace's commencement speech, "This is Water," he develops his thesis through making very relevant and relatable examples. Ones that everyone in our modern world could relate to. This is comparable to the likes of Alice Munro's style of writing. To understand this comparison, both concepts need to be trickled down to their intentions and impacts.


In the commencement speech, Wallace reminds his audience of graduates the purpose of education. "I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliche about "teaching you how to think" is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: "Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think."

This awareness allows for the generation of a greater emotional intellect, although emotional intelligence can't be measured with a score, it is instead assessed by the ability to empathize with the human experience. Wallace expresses his opinions by immersing his audience through a detailed experience, one that was explored enough for his audience to be taken on a trip once hearing it, he then introduces the idea of a having a choice, which is very eye-opening for people who are in fact not self-aware.

His thesis entails that education is about experience and awareness. By which he displays through the stylistic choice of taking his audience through the experience before providing them with his argument and coming full circle to the concept of "this is water." Literature such as this, literature that is deeply immersed in the human experience, is something that is actually relevant and relatable to audiences no matter their sociocultural contexts. This is where a bridge between the commencement speech can draw to Munro's short stories.

Literary fiction can develop empathy and emotional intelligence, this is heavily emphasized in the New York Times article "For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov." The "theory of mind" explores the concept of what humans read can influence their social and emotional skills. Experts were able to experiment and conclude that people can be primed for empathy and other social skills. "Reading sensitive and lengthy explorations of people's lives, that kind of fiction is literally putting yourself into another person's position- lives that could be more difficult, more complex, more than what you might be used to in popular fiction. It makes sense that they will find that, yea, that can lead to more empathy and understanding of other lives".

In Munro's fiction, along with many other literary fictions, nothing is arbitrary. Word choice, characterization, figurative language, everything down to the smallest of details are written with intention. The display of shared humanity transcends contexts and allows readers to develop emotional responses to the stories at hand. Humans learn to strengthen their emotional intelligence through the means of their emotional experiences, and these literary fictions allow their audience to undergo experiences that they otherwise would never undergo. Readers have to participate which allows for this emotional growth to occur. Through increasing our attention and education systems attention to such literary fiction, humans can increasingly develop emotionally which at times can be argued more important than developing academically. These audiences, with greater social skills and empathy, are able to competently assess their surroundings and themselves. Which takes us back to Wallace's thesis from his commencement speech, the real value of education being just that.

This is water.