Summary Of The Baby In The Well By David Foster Wallace

Empathy: an issue of the world or yourself In David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” he uses a personal appeal while Paul Bloom’s “The Baby in the Well” uses more of a professional writing approach. Their individual use of ethos, pathos, and logos gives their arguments different meaning. Their purpose of their articles is to argue the nature behind empathy. Finally, they question whether or not empathy is to be used selfishly or to help others. While both articles are very effective, David Foster Wallace is more likely to succeed in accomplishing his goal of connecting with the audince by using a personal appeal than Paul Bloom who used a straight forward appeal of facts and statistics.
David Wallace’s personal appeal helped him connect and gain trust with his audience. The fact that this text is actually a speech gave him more of an intimate connection with his audience. When Wallace says, “If anybody feels like perspiring… go ahead, because I’m sure going to” his clear sign on nerves connects with the graduates’ own feelings of nervousness. Wallace mentions things about college that many students have often asked themselves such as, “…what
Blooms choice of defining empathy and including its German root was a good decision for appealing to his credibility. Blooms use of quotes from qualified professionals such as “…for what the psychologist C. Daniel Batson calls “the empathy-altruism hypothesis.” Batson has found that simply instructing his subjects to take another’s perspective made them more caring and more likely to help.” Bloom mentions real events such as Hurricane Katrina and Baby Jessica, and how people reacted to them to help his argument against empathy. The way his use of facts negatively hurt his argument is because his writing was cut and dry, he pointed out flaws that people do not typically like to