Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By David Foster Wallace

Jacob Neusner’s commencement speech points the finger not only at the graduating students but mainly at the faculty members. He sways towards how easy-going, laid back, and forgiving the professors and other faculty members were towards their students. In that sense, Neusner clearly states that these students aren’t prepared for what’s about to come because they have always had someone hold their hand every step of the way and shown forgiveness in this fantasy called “college.” College is supposed to help you get your feet wet and aid students with preparation for the harsh so called real world. Many thoughts ran through my brain while reading this speech as did my emotions which were up and down like a rollercoaster. As much as I agree with Jacob Neusner on the fact that college and the “real world” are

To begin, Washington is standing upon the stage to provide uplifting words as these students move on to greater things. He uses words such as “dream”, “aspire” and “success” (Washington), to provide motivation for them to become more improved and promising individuals. These words are all encouraging and positive for the purpose of influencing the graduates to pursue a fruitful life and to continue dreaming of more prosperity and goodness. While he is telling his

In Florence Kelley’s speech before the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905, she argues that there are millions of young children working under harsh conditions that is not acceptable in human nature. Kelley promotes an end to child labor by utilizing pathos and repetition in her speech to strengthen her claim. By stating out facts, she compares the conditions of young boys and girls with healthy men in order to emphasize about child abuse and to encourage her audience to stand with her to fight for child labor laws.

These stories allow the listeners and readers to put themselves in the situation pertaining to the topic of discussion. For example, the story about the adult in the grocery story. When a person hears about the story they automatically think to a time where they have been in the same situation, wanting to go home after a long day’s work. However, if someone is not an adult or has not faced that exact situation, Wallace explains it in a way that could commonly put the listener in a situation where they are tired and they are having to do some remedial task before carrying on with daily life. When he explains that we can choose to think differently the listener will most likely think to a time where they have automatically thought someone was out to get them. He uses this example in the grocery store to show the importance of choosing to think

David Foster Wallace’s speech “This Is Water” was spoken to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. In the speech he reflects on a unique way to think about yourself, other and the world around you. I conducted three interviews with people of different ages to see how they conform or contradict with Wallace’s speech. Martha explained how in college she was self-centered, “In college it was all about me, me, and me. And what I could get out of stuff,” (Martha Arieta). This relates to Wallace’s topic of the natural default setting. “Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor,” (Wallace pg.3). Wallace is explaining that

David Foster Wallace talks about how the commencement speakers should speak about why they were chosen to give the speech. And why they are where they are basically how the college has made them accomplish. Every graduation anyone has ever been too everyone always belittles the commencement speeches

David Foster Wallace begins the 2005 Kenyon Commencement address, by telling the graduating class that education is a useless endeavor if you first do not have the ability to think. The graduates all want to assume that at this point they fully understand how to think. Wallace provides evidence that as we all know how to think, we usually think of things in a very superficial way. Thinking in a superficial manner isn’t bad, right? We all constantly think of ourselves, because we have to take care of ourselves, and we don’t usually see circumstances that don’t fit our lives or what we’re directly going through, but this is exactly Wallace’s point. Our natural human instinct is to think of ourselves and how we feel in every situation, but instead

Galileo Galilei, an Italian polymath, once said, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” After graduating college, many students feel anxious about the new chapter of their lives they’re about to begin. Students are bound by a curriculum since primary school, guidelines they conform to all their lives in order to walk across a stage with a degree in hand. However, these individuals are seldom able to explore the passions inside of them that shape their aspirations throughout their time in the education system. Instead, they reflect on their college years of staying up all night to write final papers. Finals papers students have revised and edited a multitude of times in order to produce a paper that adheres to a rubric and, once again, conforming to another set of guidelines. In Donovan Livingston’s Harvard Graduate School of Education Commencement Speech, “Lift Off”, Livingston uses rhetorical devices such as alliteration, allusion, and metaphor to reinforce his message that students should not be limited by the confines of the education system, but that the education system should be supporting and guiding students towards reaching their full potential by the time they step out into the real world.

In May 23, 1999, Anna Quindlen, an extraordinary American writer gave a commencement speech at Mount Holyoke College to a group of students, that were graduating. The speech revolved around on perfection, and making individuals choices around communities . Quindlen believed in constant improvement for the class for their benefit. She stresses the importance of being themselves and quit the dreams of being perfect. Her rhetorical language left the meaning of true life on the college students which allowed it to be precedent for their future lives. Through all her emotional anecdotes, allusions, imagery, and tropes she inspired the graduating class to stop striving to fit society’s standards. Through her appeals Quindlen believes in making individual decisions for themselves before they forget who they really are.

In David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon Commencement Address, he tells the graduate students that in order to fully receive an education, they first must learn to think. Through his use of dry humor, Wallace gives the college graduates a realistic view on life after college, and how it will be physically, mentally, and emotionally draining and lead to boredom and frustration. However, he provides them with tools to combat these negative emotions in hopes to lessen the stress they will encounter in their daily lives.

234-235), which again hooks in the reader. After this slightly comical imagery, Wallace brings up a point that rings true for many. “…if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop…” (Wallace pg. 235) This quote really got to me because I often get into ruts of thought similar to that one, where I think nothing is going my way, and that the world is against me. Such thoughts are seemingly commonplace in our society today, and Wallace uses that undeniable reality to prove his point. The day-to-day grind is only going to depress us more if we go into it focused solely on how terrible everything is for

Barrell’s speech intended to challenge the graduates to leave their comfort zones and create change. He said,

Florence Kelley a social worker and reformer that is against child labor, she pours out her deepest and inner-most feelings towards child labor. Kelley tried using different methods to convince the audience to end child labor, she uses a strong tone, repeats words, tries to make people feel guilty with the words she use and it was all to send out a message. In Kelley’s speech she made sure the audience knew who and what she was talking about, she continuously repeats the word “children” and makes sure to add their age right after by doing so she knew it would affect the audience, after all it was to a National Women Suffrage Association, meaning the audience would mainly be women. Stereotypically women tend to be the emotional and easily

He describes what an average day might be like for the newly aged adults, working for hours at their difficult job. Once the work day has ended, they will be fatigued and longing to go home, have dinner, and relax. Only, there is no food in the pantry, so they must venture to the grocery store. In public the adults will endure bumper to bumper traffic, listen to loud, rowdy children, and tolerate a store full of tired, hateful people, just the same as themselves, who all stand in clogged lines waiting to check out and escape the chaos as fast as possible (Wallace 3-4). Wallace tells his audience this is the time when they, as a single person in this mass of commotion, should choose to be aware. He suggests dismissing all pessimistic thoughts and negative attitudes so that then the young adults will be one step closer to turning off their natural default setting (Wallace

Famous actors, musicians, politicians, artists and authors are often called upon to deliver commencement addresses at prestigious places of higher learning. It doesn't take Nobel-Prize-winning social scientists or psychologists, or speech professors to predict what these elite guest speakers will say on such occasions such as these. The speaker will tell the graduating class to aim high, never give up, make the most of opportunities, and do as our forbearers did: pull yourselves up by the bootstraps. But when Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks showed up at Vassar College to present the commencement address, his presentation avoided those clichés and platitudes. Hanks was refreshing original and yet remarkably pragmatic. This paper critiques Hanks' themes, examines his rhetorical techniques, and editorially analyzes his purpose.