Commencement Address: Rhetorical Analysis Of Jason Reynolds's Speech

Steven Zheng

Mrs.Korey

3/20/23

English 2

“Jason Reynold delivers Lesley University Commencement Address,” Rhetorical Analysis

Numerous individuals each year graduate from college, destined for the real world as they take flight. In the highly creative and skillfully crafted, “Jason Reynolds delivers Lesley University Commencement Address”, given at the commencement of the graduates of Lesley University on May 19th 2018, Jason Reynolds delivers a poignant and deeply meaningful message of taking on the world. Jason Reynolds establishes credibility and meaningfully appeals emotionally to his audience through his masterful use of similes, metaphor, alliteration, repetition, symbolism, humor, and charisma to help them take flight in their lives.

Reynolds makes many different attempts in order to captivate and establish himself to the audience. Jason Reynolds first jokes of his problems with getting on his cap for the ceremony, drawing attention. Furthermore, Reynolds starts to poke fun at the stereotypical trope of every graduation through elementary school to College, humorously claiming that everyone gives the same cliche message, and going on to give the same message. As Reynolds states, “In elementary school, this was most likely followed by a selection from the chorus, which you were probably a part of, “This Land and Your Land,” or “This Little Light of Mine”(Reynolds 0:47). From the use of jokes, Reynolds elicits the audience’s attention to the speech at hand, in return, establishing deeper investment and focus for the audience. Furthermore, Jason Reynolds uses a strong voice, clearly and concisely using pronouncing and accentuating several words of his speech such as, “charge”, “also”, “every”, “back and forth, back and forth”, “and”, “flipping, flapping, and flopping”, and, “ how exactly, how exactly with my grossly, my grossly…” . Profoundly, in Jason Reynold’s humor combined with overall charisma Reynolds firmly establishes both himself and his credibility through such uses of his humor, drawing in his audience to his

Primarily, Jason Reynolds criticizes the concept and notion that everyone possesses the same ability for flight, the same ability to achieve greatness: “To spread my wings and change the world without ever addressing the fact that not all of us have wings. There are those of us whose wings have been clipped”(Reynolds 7:32). Jason Reynolds vividly appeals to the emotions of the audience of the immense symbolism and parallelism within his statements about wings. Repeatedly, Reynolds reinforces the wings as a sign and symbol of opportunity for those who have them, but for those whose “wings have been clipped”, they are stuck, unable to fly in the air, appealing to the audiences’ emotions to reflect on the differences of people and what they had had to allow them to graduate. Such symbolism and metaphor used masterfully by Jason Reynolds provides a further appeal to emotions through poignant and deeply meaningful words not conveyed through direct