Compare and Contrast

In these two stories there is one difference that sticks out the most to me, in “Toni Morrison’s Noble Lecture”, Morrison uses the story of the wise blind old women to teach a lesson to two children that she is wary of. While in “This is Water”, although it starts off with a story of fish swimming it quickly changes the focus to everyday life for a tired hardworking man. While they both reveal valid points in their own way the points are very different. In “This is Water” Wallace claims that knowledge is useless unless the educated knows what to think about, that some college classes even teach you what to think about. While “Toni Morrison’s Noble Lecture” claims that censorship “thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, and suppresses human potential.” I think these two statement have a difference in views, while Wallace sees these classes as a way to keep people “alive” and happy, I think Morrison would see this as a type of censorship to keep peoples thought suppressed from being free ranged. Although Wallace does repeat many times that he does not want to influence people’s decisions and they should believe in what they want, only requesting they listen to what he has to say.