The Review Writing of《This is Water》

The author, David Foster Wallace, was considered by many to be one of the finest writers of his generation. He only gave one speech in public in all his life, in which he talked about his view of life. The speech happened in a commencement of Kenyon College in 2005. Now, the widely distributed video has been into a thin book, which name is “this is water”.

According to Wallace's view, the water was on behalf of the most obviously, the most important reality, but it was difficult to see or talk about; and “the same experience for different people may mean something completely different”, because everyone had a different “default settings” and a different way from the experience in the construction of meaning. Therefore, the ideal of liberal education was to make people out of this self center, learning to “how to think” and “thinking” control. Wallace then cut to the usual humor and plain philosophy from the contemporary urban life, pointing out the importance of maintaining vigilance and consciousness. At the same time, we should be free to choose the way of looking at things.

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A Review of This is Water

It is a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College. During the speech ,Foster Wallace gives a series of examples which we usually meet , then he evaluates them and conclues some meaningful ,philosophic opinions .

Firstly ,Foster Wallace draws into the word ‘self-centredness by the fish story ,he tells us that everybody has self-centredness,it is our defaut-setting ,hard-wired into our board at birth .We always put our awareness in the center of the univers ,the realest and important person ,but the reality maybe be not what we think about .

Then Foster Wallace enumerates another story, in the story ,we can have different attitudes toward the same thing ,it all depends on how we think .The thing is that there are different ways to think about these kinds of situations.for example ,one people gets up in the morning and work hard for nine or ten hours ,he is very tired and stressed out ,when he drives car to the supermarket ,everything he sufferred is dull ,stupid and infuriating .However if you think in other ways ,the same thing will be obviously different ,you will fell everything is fine.The reason causing the different results is that our automatic ,unconscious belief of we are the centre of situations. Foster Wallace advise us to think this way although it is hard ,he told us that we need learn how to think ,how to pay attention .It will be within our power to experence a crowded loud slow consumer-hell-type situation . The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.

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My Feeling—“A Little Prince”

“Little Prince” is a clear spiritual book, as clear as the water, it is a book about life and the lives of the fable. It writes for adults, teenagers and children. And “Little Prince” brings feel warm and fresh for people.

The story is about a boy—the little prince. The little prince has a serious attitude. He lives on a small planet. But he is lonely. His heart is full of endless loneliness and sorrow. Fortunately, a beautiful rose came in his life. She is a beautiful and proud flower. They love each other. But a little argument separates them. And he starts traveling. He goes to many planets and meets many different people.

At last a little prince comes to earth, he encounters a small fox. He thinks he must assume responsibility for the rose. A little prince learns love form the fox. A little prince finally finds him unable to go back, he deeply misses his flowers. Little prince can’t bear to miss the pain, but he can’t go back. And finally he chose to snake venom end his life. He thinks it will be able to cast off their bulky body to go back. Every time, when I read “The Little Price”, I always move about it. The little prince is na?ve, childish, chaste and sincere. I move about his attitude about the world. In real life, we often busy in the all day. We have not soul to live. The passage of time, childhood away, we have gradually grown up and taken away many years of memories. When I read this book, I feel a little sad – about ourselves, who are losing more and more innocence.

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Wuthering heights

Emily published only one novel, Wuthering Heights, but this single work has its place among the masterpieces of English literature.

Emily was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of

England and died of tuberculosis in the late 1848. When Bronte sisters are young, their father asked them to read many books: the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott and many others. The children also read enthusiastically articles on current affairs.

Unlike Charlotte, Emily had no close friends. She wrote a few letters and was interested in mysticism. Her first novel, Wuthering Heights, a story-within-a-story, did not gain immediate success as Charlotte's Jane Eyre, but it has got later fame as one of the most intense novels written in the English language. In contrast to Charlotte and Anne, whose novels take the form of autobiographies written by authoritative and reliable narrators, Emily introduced an unreliable narrator, Lockwood.

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The review of This is Water

Y30151258 李倩男 作业一

At the beginning of the speech, Wallace told us a story of two fish. Then he said banal platitude can have life-or-death importance in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence. The author pointed out that we often think that we are the absolute center of the universe, and this is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. We often get our ideas by our own immediate,urgent thought and feeling, but it’s not right, even be fooled. Therefore, we should learn to choose to get free of our nature, hard-wired default-setting. Don’t see and interpret everything only through this lens of self. Then Wallace given an example of shopping in the supermarket.

Our natural default-setting is certainty that situations like the bad traffic and the crowded supermarket are really all about us, for all the word, like everybody else is just in our way. However, if we think it in different ways, we may experience a meaningful and sacred situation with our compassion and love than a crowded, loud, consumer-hell-type situation. Of course, this is hard, it takes will and mental effort. In order to achieve it, primarily we should know what to worship, and know what’s the real freedom. The real freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. Then we will be awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us.

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After Reading Helen Keller

The book tells the story of Helen Keller.

At the age of 19 months, Helen Keller was a happy, healthy girl. She could already say a few words. Unfortunately, she had a high fever which caused her to become deaf and blind. No longer could she see nor hear. The fever cut her off from the outside world, depriving her of sight and sound. It was as if she had been thrown into a dark prison cell from which there could be no release. She felt lost.

After that, she began to explore the world by using her other senses. She learned to do many things this way. For example, she could recognize people by feeling of their faces or their clothes.

She made up signs with her hands so she could "talk" to her family. She had 60 different signs. Helen was a very bright child. Soon she found herself was different from other children——she couldn't talk. This made her so angry that she used to hurl herself around the room, kicking and screaming in frustration.

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2009—2010学年第一学期期末考试

?英语写作Ⅲ?试卷（开卷）

Class No: A0731 Student No: 27

Directions: Write a Book Report on a book which you think is meaningful and well written.

Walden

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the author of Walden, was born in Concord, Massachusetts. When he was a child, he always went to the woods and field with his old brother. So he loves the nature very much. In the middle of 19th century, American economies developed so rapidly that most people pursuit the material life and ignore the spiritual life. But Thoreau wants to live a simple life. Also for the Transcendentalist Movement was centered in Concord and Emerson had a great influence on him. All these made Thoreau go to build a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond and live alone to close to the nature in 1845. Later, he wrote the famous book, Walden, which mainly talks about his life and thoughts during he lived alone in the woods near Walden Pond.

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