Oprah Winfrey's Commencement Speech

David McCullough, in his Wellesley High School Commencement Address, utilizes imagery to convey to his audience that each individual possesses the same common potential. While addressing the graduating class of 2012, McCullough makes a point to emphasize how unexceptional the students are. By bringing to light the fact that the students are all wearing the same “ceremonial costume…shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all” (McCullough 1), he illustrates the conformity of the crowd. By depicting the cap and gown, McCullough demonstrates that each student at the ceremony are at the same level. This indicates that the members of the audience are all capable of achieving just as much as the one sitting next to them. McCullough also gives the students

Congratulations! You are invited to join the founding National English Honor Society at Chancellor High School for the 2016-2017 school year.

New Brunswick, NJ., March 23, 2017 — The Rutgers Board of Governors selected actress and producer, Viola Davis, to be Rutgers University’s 2017 Commencement Speaker.

Throughout reading “Commencement Speech, Kenyon College”, I found this short story very inspiring to read as I found myself doing more research for this essay because I was so interested in it. Wallace was very reluctant to give this speech because he wasn’t sure he was ready to talk in front of 400 graduates and what if what he had to say was ordinary not something that would stick with all these students the rest of their lives. Reading this speech through the first time the tone particularly stuck out to me, a direct yet casualness in the way he made his argument really made this go from ordinary to extraordinary. Starting off with water and ending with water tied the essay into one big loop with many messages within it but a central message central the main idea water. Water comes within many forms like ice, evaporation, solid liquid, colored or even clear and so many more. The idea isn’t water is cool or everything is water but that life is everything and everywhere. Life can be happy, depressed, lonely, and uncontrollable but it still is life and that life is your and your life is precious and should be used like it was the last drop of water on the planet. David Foster Wallace uses his mindfulness to be bring about the ideas of our freedom and power in our own lives. For example,

Rosa Parks once said, “I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free.. So other people would be also free”. Rosa Parks was the Civil Rights Activist , who refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, spurring the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end segregation. The author of this speech, Oprah Winfrey, shows how thankful she is, and how Rosa Parks change the world through her eulogy. To remember her life to change our world, Oprah Winfrey delivers eulogy for Rosa Parks. She strongly supports her point by using a personal anecdote, allusion to what happened at the bus, and parallelism throughout her eulogy.

On June 4, 2003, world-wide known comedian, Will Ferrell delivered a very influential and amusing speech to the Harvard graduating Class of 2003. Ferrell expressed this graduating speech with something new and unique. He doesn’t present his speech like any other class day speaker; he is very inspirational and wants the students to see how different their life is going to be once they leave this graduation ceremony. Ferrell compellingly employs a very lighthearted tone, which includes humor, and pathos to effectively gain the audience’s attention and successfully tell students about the “real world”.

Reading the commencement speech “This is Water”, written and delivered by David Foster Wallace to students and their families at Kenyon College was nothing like what I was expecting it to be. I can imagine the listeners that were present were just as shocked as I was when they finally grasped the message he was presenting to them that day. Normally when someone delivers a commencement speech to students graduating, it's more along the lines of “be all that you can be” or “You can do it” with emphasis on the word “you.” No one really tells you to think of others first at that point in your lives. However, Wallace did just that. He told the students that if everyone would be honest with themselves and others they would admit to being self-centered egotistical jerks. He said we were born thinking that way but the good news is we can reprogram ourselves by changing our perspective on others and being empathetic to other people’s situations and feelings. Wallace also

As an African American woman entering the field of computer engineering, I realize that diversity is a crucial aspect in order to accelerate technological solutions. An engineering team with similar thought processes and backgrounds will achieve far less than their culturally aware counterparts.

Oprah Winfrey, for one, grew up in an abusive household where male relatives of hers would repeatedly molest her, which took an emotional toll on Oprah. She was an unsettled teenager who appeared to have no future ahead of her, considering the cruelty and harm she had undergone. After Oprah moved to Nashville to live with her father, where she could have easily been absorbed in the same life style she perused in New York, constantly surrounding herself with promiscuous behavior. Instead, she cleaned up her act and won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant, got an on-air job at WVOL, and also won a full scholarship to Tennessee State University. From there she continued her career as a radio newscaster, and eventually had her own radio show. With continued persistence, Oprah gained her own television talk show and is now the highest-paid performer on television. Oprah’s ambition was what drove her to continue her fight through her hard childhood, and make a positive, healthy life for herself. If Oprah lacked the ambitious qualities that she had and gave up, she would likely be trapped as a damaged and troubled woman who let her passed experience define who she

Oprah Winfrey once said “Excellence is the best deterrent to sexism and racism.” (brainyquote.com) This statement is a great example of moral courage. Being able to move past those who want to put you down and do it with a smile. Oprah has always shown moral courage, not just in her career, but in her whole life. She is a role model to all. I will state why she displays moral courage, how she relates to Elie Wiesel, the author of the book, Night, and a nobel peace prize winner, and finally how Oprah has impacted me. By examining why she displays moral courage, how she relates to Elie Wiesel, and how she has impacted me it is clear how Oprah is the very definition of moral courage.

Pathos and ethos combined to provide the audience with a sense of respect and reverence towards not only Mrs. Obama but themselves. She alluded to the idea of the American dream in her speech as well and used this allusion to strengthen her plea for students in the audience to make societal changes by feeling obliged to reach back and share what they’ve gained from their own successes and opportunities.

Oprah Winfrey uses her Cecil B de Mille acceptance speech to cast light on societal issues of corruption, discrimination, objectification, and racism. Oprah’s speech reflects an age and dialogue of constant controversy and arguable division surrounding allegations of sexual assault, mistreatment, and the seemingly unthinkable idea of an underlying patriarchy within the film industry. Oprah explores and conveys these ideas through the use of various persuasive linguistic and oratorical techniques. This is seen through her use of ethos and pathos when creating an emphatic delivery and appealing to the emotions of the audience when utilising anecdotes. This is also further seen through her repetition of female pronouns when persuading the audience

When you hear obesity, do you imagine malnutrition or simply an individual who “eats too much?” Well, these health threatening issues go hand and hand. Learning that a large number of obese individuals are low income, it can be concluded that a lack of funds results in cheaper, more fattening and unhealthy food purchases, which ultimately can develop into malnutrition and unsafe weight gain. The eye-opening film, A Place At The Table, provides viewers with a true representation of how the issues of hunger and malnutrition in the United States affect individuals on a daily basis. Throughout this movie, the filmmakers, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, examine the lives of three individuals who suffer from hunger and and lack of nutrition. Although our

The Kenyon Commencement Speech After we graduate from high school the most common thought that we have is going into the adult world. Some of us don’t even have a clue on what the real world is about. It’s not all about testes, quizzes or exam; it’s either we get or we don’t. This speech is basically about the decision we make in our lives and we act on these decisions.

In the speech “Steve Jobs Commencement Address to Stanford University, Class of 2005”, Apple CEO Steve Jobs provides his audience with personal experiences and the rough periods he went through in his early years before founding apple that helped him succeed. With the use of his stories Jobs creates a character that prevails through obstacles and manages to achieve his goals, which inspires his audience to look up to him and show that failure is sometimes necessary to succeed.