Shipping Out

In his essay "Shipping Out" David Foster Wallace recounts his experience as a first time vacationer on a cruise ship. He talks about the eccentric people he observed, his cabin #1009 will all of its interesting amenities (including a insanely powerful toilet), and what a seasick person truly looks like, but one other topic he explores is a brochure about the cruise. Wallace argues that the brochure is a powerful piece of advertisement. He talks about the how bright and glossy it is and how the statements in it make a promise that the words themselves begin to make good on. The brochure says that the cruise will pamper and make you so relaxed that you'll forget all about ever having to do anything for yourself. Even the words in the brochure are so well used that they have a relaxing effect on the people who read them. All of this would lead to a great advertising tool. If you can effect what people think about then you can convince them of a lot, which is what the brochure described in Wallace's essay did. It used its words in such a way that when they were read, you could almost instantly feel and think what the people who made the brochure intended. If you're someone who has never been on a cruise before, like David Foster Wallace, and you read the brochure, you'll become immediately interested, at least, in taking one because it's like you're getting a taste of what the cruise is like by having the words relax you in a similar way the cruise might.