In David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water", Wallace emphasizes on our "default setting" in which the universe and all it entails revolves around me, myself, and I. With this mindset, everything bad is happening to only me and everyone else is just in my way. However, Wallace opens up the door of choice by attempting to provide insight on how situations may affect others. With this insight, we can make assumptions as to why some things are the way they are, and although these assumptions might not always be true they can allow us to perceive situations as less shitty than what our "default setting" allows us. This insight gives us the power of freedom, the power of choice, and the power of awareness rather than cruise control through life miserably.
In Toni Morrison's "Nobel Lecture", Morrison focuses on the choice that we, as the young people of the world, have the power to let language live or die. She illustrates this choice with the story of children holding a bird and asking an old blind woman whether it is living or dead. The bird symbolizes language and the children symbolize the young people of the world. Whether the bird is alive or dead we are responsible for it. If it alive we can choose to maintain it and nurture it, or we can choose to kill it. If the bird is already dead we can preserve what is left, or we can choose to leave it how it is and let it wither away.
Both speeches are similar in the fact that they offer us choices that can greatly impact society and how we live our separate lives. However, they are different in the aspect of how we can make those choices. Wallace's speech focuses on the choices we can make in every day life. Meanwhile, Morrison's speech emphasizes on language and whether we will choose to preserve it or not.
Also here is a good video that illustrates "This Is Water" pretty well.
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