Confirmation Progymnasmata
David Foster Wallace presents a very interesting point throughout his “Supposedly Fun Thing” essay. His style of writing throughout the piece is quite brilliant as he does not try to sound like the typical fancy English writer, instead, he makes it a very direct, un-literary piece. The point is to make the reader understand just how much David Foster Wallace dislikes this cruise ship. His repeated use of the word “despair” and listed out displeasures of the ship give the reader a good idea how Wallace feel about cruise ships and travel as a whole.
Wallace presents his overall feeling of the Nadir (name that he gave to the cruise ship) through the quote, “There’s something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that’s unbearably sad” (Wallace). He shows his unhappiness through listing all of the things that end up feeling “mandatory” upon the ship. The feeling the Wallace provides is that you are being forced to have fun on cruise ships regardless of if you want to or not, simply because that is what you do on cruise ships, “have fun.” Wallace’s essay is perfectly logical as I experienced the same issues when I was a kid. As I stated in my last writing, I have never been on a cruise ship, but being stuck in the middle of the ocean on a boat where the only thing to do is participate in the “activities” does not seem awfully intriguing. I can personally relate to this when I was young. I never looked forward to going on vacation when I was little because of this exact reason, I always felt out of place and like I was being forced to have fun. If I did not enjoy one of the activities that we did, my parents would get mad at me since they were paying for us to have fun. This concept never made since to me and would make me anxious about going on vacation. Wallace was able to perfectly capture my feelings as a kid on vacation.