Commencement Speech At Mount Holyoke College Rhetorical Analysis

Success—the goal of one’s work. People can reach towards a certain limit before it comes to a stop. As shown in The Miracle Worker by William Gibson, determination can lead one on the road to success. Annie Sullivan is a girl from Tewksbury—an asylum for the mentally ill and poor—who is hired by the Keller family to teach their child, Helen Keller. Throughout Sullivan’s journey to create a miracle for the blind-and-deaf Helen Keller; Annie had to keep her head high through the challenges.

Grit is a graduation speech from Dr. Kathleen Hart at a college commencement ceremony in 2013. In this speech she talks about what it takes to succeed, and the word she uses is grit. Throughout the speech she lists many identities that a person with grit has. She also mentions that a person does not succeed based on looks, luck, or knowing someone who helped them get there. It is simply based on the attribute a person has no matter what.

Far more than just a juxtaposition to the father’s frailness, the mother’s action serve as an idealized metaphor for Jason’s own struggles. By watching his mom stand up to people of a higher, privileged class, Jason is meant to be inspired to reject torment from the ‘elite’ of his own grade school microcosm(the bullies). Though rocky at the start of the novel, the relationship between Jason and his sister Julia develops with the plot and, upon conclusion, she also reveals herself as a role model and advocate of Jason’s “Inside-You”. In a way that echoes the actions of her mother, Julia too stands up to an arrogant authority. She tells Uncle Brian that “I intend to study law in Edinburg, and all the Brian Lambs of tomorrow will have to do their networking without me”(52).

Professor Joe Sarnowski’s academic journal criticizes the characters of the story, “Every Day Use”. He examines the conflict between the mother and her oldest daughter, Dee. Sarnowski asserts that Dee is trying to justify her personal gain, since she cherishes the economic value of the quilts more than that of the heritage they represent. The author continues to compare Dee’s ego with that of her sister Maggie. Who in contrast, has true appreciation for her heritage.

Basic, Boring, and Plain are just three words of how to never describe the thought provoking research book, The Smartest Kids in the World, by the author, Amanda Ripley, who logically argues that education must be reformed. She mainly underscores the need to apply the revolutionizing techniques that she deliberately unveils to the audience with a hurl of statistics and appealing testimonies from foreign exchange students to the very developed nation: The United States. Ripley urges the nation to implement more rigor into students’ coursework, hire highly educated teachers, and hold both teachers and students accountable for results in order to prepare students for the flood of trenches that lay ahead. The author quickly grasps the attention of the reader by presenting three unlikely candidates, Finland, Poland, and South Korea, as her main role models of a good educational system that the modern world should learn from. It almost seems like she is trying to convince the world that indeed there are elephants on top of earth who are trying to balance the globe from falling.

In the late 90s, racism is still intact, As time goes on interracial diverse and people have grown to withstand racism. In "Seek Success: Marry Someone like yourself," an article by Sue Richardson in The Dallas Morning News published, March 14, 1993, describes the chances of happiness is zero to nothing in a relationship that has interracial or "too many differences". In the article, Richardson 's purpose is to persuade the couple to look for "sameness" in their dates and avoid at all cost opposites with great differences. She is persuading her readers to encourage the youth into steering away from the interracial relationship as they mature.In the article, she does this in criticizing tone. Richardson begins her article with an outburst of

Having been able to write a book makes her a grammar authority in the minds of the reader, but to equate herself to her audience, the grammar novice, she presents the steps that lead her to creating this book. In chapter twenty, title “How to Drop Out of High School in the Ninth Grade and Still Make Big Bucks Telling People How to Use Good Grammar: ‘That’ versus ‘Which’”, she writes step-by-step instructions explaining how she went from dropout to author. Her journey is relatable, as she makes reference to the feeling of being an imposter pretending to understand the rules of grammar for the sake of her reputation. The final steps of her journey “Point out...that the grammar emperors wear no clothes” (87). A reference to the story of the emperor being tricked into believing he was wearing the most beautiful clothes means to show the reader that those who paint themselves as experts have tricked themselves into believing the are intellectually superior, but this knowledge is a false cover.

I say, "And so she trudged up the wooden stairs, her sad brown shoes taking her to the house she never liked." (Cisneros,1984). The ability of Esperanza to make her life a story is the reason she can bare everything she goes through and a way to find maturity and her identity. We can see how Esperanza tries to become more independent and how she is able to identify the barriers that most of their family members have. She tells us about how her great-grand mother (whose name is Esperanza) have lived contemplating the view from the window like looking for some escape.

She only needs one reference to Harry Potter and then everyone knows who she is. She uses a lot of energy on humor in the first part. Maybe because she is nervous, which she indicates that she is with “But the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation!” (Page 1, column 1, line 7-10) maybe she wants to get rid of her nervousness or perhaps she just wants a bond with the audience before talking more serious. She uses ethos here because the speech is from a graduation and she’s an expert in graduating because she experienced it herself and she has an excellent life now.

Grasping the same idea, she held onto her hard time back in her home. Jing-mei is her last hope to prove that her homeland can be just as talented as Americans. To follow through with this objective, her mother bends over backwards in search of the "right" kind of prodigy for her daughter. Although Jing-mei determinedly upsets her mother 's desires to make her a prodigy, it was as if it were decades afterwards in life that she picks up the understanding into her mother 's basic motives. This exposition will endeavor that "Two Kinds" is a compelling story to bring to light on the issues of identity.