In relation to the theme, “Awareness” this essay will discuss David Foster Wallace’s This is Water, Nick Sousanis’s unflattening, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl. The main points this essay will focus on is understanding how we work in this world and being more open about the things that go on around you and others. Seeing the world differently from what others see to what you see and by doing so it will help us develop a better point of view and give us more knowledge on certain topics that’s being discussed around the world. These texts will help us develop knowledge on consciousness and open our minds to new ideas and experiences. Furthermore, this essay will show us how being more aware can actually help you develop a better understanding on how the world should and will work; due to the fact that we aren’t stuck in that “Default setting” that we have a choice whether or not we remain clueless and stay in our default-settings or create opportunities for us to evolve and endure new experiences.
The three texts that I will explore in this essay are David Foster Wallace’s This is Water, Nick Sousanis’s unflattening, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl. First, David Foster Wallace’s This is Water gives us an understanding on what it means to have a Default Setting. The author portrays a scenario giving us an inside look at a random person’s perspective and opinion on how they should or would see the world and others. Second, Nick Sousanis’s unflattening depicts an issue where the fixed viewpoint makes us feel trapped, and gives scenarios where he goes against it. The author shows us how they believe and think from different perspectives on how the world should actually function. Third, Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl shows us how a mother explains to her daughter what it means to be “Girl” in this world, giving her life advice. She explains to her daughter that there is a certain way a lady should act. That a “girl” should act a certain way or be a certain way.
The common theme that each of the stories share is how the world is trying to mold us, “The People” like one another, by portraying us as some type of “default setting”. There is a significant amount of similarities between David Foster Wallace’s This is Water, Nick Sousanis’s unflattening, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl. The main theme that each short story shares is that all three authors portray scenarios where everyone is stuck in their own type of “Default setting”. The authors describe in a way how sometimes in life we are unable to make certain decisions because of the way we were raised or taught. Wallace expresses how “It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever”(Wallace 2). Wallace is basically saying that we are born with a default setting but it is our jobs to become more aware and open our eyes, enlighten ourselves and see what the world has to offer. Without any thoughts on how the world actually works, we’ll be left in the dark. Nick Sousanis also states “Languages are powerful tools for exploring the ever greater depths of our understanding. But for all their strengths, languages can also become traps. In mistaking their boundaries for reality, we find ourselves, much like flatlanders, blind to possibilities beyond these artificial borders, lacking both the awareness and the means to step out”(Sousanis 52). Nick Sousanis explains that to shape our thoughts we must explore and find the thing we’ve been searching for. We tend to focus on so many things and get so blindsided that we forget what our main goal is. Futhersome, Jamaica Kincaid’s girl the author states that “ this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don’t squat down to play marbles– you are not a boy, you know”(Kincaid 321). Kincaid explained that women should have a certain way they should act, if they act differently than the way they’re supposed to act, it’s considered unlady-like.
While the short stories discussed in this essay contain similarities, there are a few differences between them too. The main difference between David Foster Wallace’s This is Water, Nick Sousanis’s unflattening, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl is the way each short story viewed the world in its own way. While Kincaid talks about the way women should be portrayed , Wallace and Sousanis talk about how everyone has a choice to be portrayed in the kind of image they want to be portrayed as. Wallace says that in life we have a choice to make whether we choose to stay trapped in that default setting or break out of it and develop. Wallace states that “But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of 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. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing”(Wallace 7 and 8). Basically explaining that it all depends on us whether we want to put in the effort in choosing what we really want in life or remaining the way everyone else is like. But Girl Kincaid states that “always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?”(Kincaid 321). Portraying that women have the power to accomplish many things in life. Basically saying that you can choose what type of woman you want to be; the one that feels empowered to do whatever they want or the one that’s too scared to develop and is stuck in that “Default setting”. Finally Nick Sousanis states that “In seeking new approaches for opening expansive spaces and awakening possibilities. Let us look to our ways of seeing themselves, and how, quite literally, the means to create perspective lies right between our eyes. The distance separating our eyes means that there is a difference between the view each produces – Thus there is no single, “correct” view. Basically stating that everyone has the power to have different opinions and point of views because in reality during certain situations there is no correct answer, many times things go unexplained all the time.
In David Foster Wallace’s This is Water, Nick Sousanis’s unflattening, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl. We can acknowledge that each short story portrayed a different type of meaningful message that supported the same theme which was awareness/consciousness. The authors show us what life would be like if we all acted and thought the same, it would be like we all were the same. The world as we know it would have no type of development, it would create a dull environment and everyone would be unhappy in life. But we all have the power to break out of that shell and create a new environment where we all can express ourselves and educate ourselves on how the world, others and even ourselves should be viewed . In life you have a choice to make your own decisions, you just have to try and put in the effort whether you want it or not. We all have a choice to make, it all depends on whether we want to make that choice or not.
Finally, in relation to the theme “ Awareness” David Foster Wallace’s This is Water, Nick Sousanis’s unflattening, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl was able to help us develop a better understanding and point of view on how the world should and would function if we were able to gain the knowledge and experiences that came with being more consciously aware. David Foster Wallace used a scenario from a random person’s perspective and opinion on how they should or would see the world and others. Nick Sousanis used different points of views, by depicting a diverse comic that shows multiple perspectives. Jamaica Kincaid created a poem composed of life advice and instructions on how a woman should or would act. The theme helped us construct a series of ideas where we are able to break out of that “Default setting” and create new ways to find options and possibilities to help us grow and develop with critical thinking.
