Commencement Address Analysis

The “Commencement Address” by George Ssunders is about kindness. As a kid your parents always tell you to be polite to others and how to behave in different situations. They wanted you always to greet others with a smile and make them comfortable in your company. That doesn’t always go as planned. Kids behave after what they other kids do. If some kids bully the other kids will follow so they won’t get bullied too. There are also many kids who don’t think about the consequences of their behaviour. They don’t know how the bullied kid feels. No. We have to embrace each other and be kind. That’s what George Saunders tries to illuminate in his speech.

The “Commencement Address” is a speech held by George Saunders to the graduation class at Syracuse

10, l. 198) Whit this phrase he tells them that is okay to want something, to be succesfull, because the process of becoming kinder includes that we take ourselves serious, so we can be the best version of our selves. That is the main focus in the speech.
George Saunders is a 59 years old american writer and university professor. He’s born on the 2nd of December 1958 in Amarillo, Texas. His work has appeared in many different magazines for example The New Yorker and The Guardian. He’s a professor at Syracuse University where he teaches creative writing. He has won several prices for some of his writing.
He establishes his ethos because he includes himself in his speech he talks about his background and starts the text by saying “Some old fart, his best years behind him, who, over the course of his life, has made a series of dreadful mistakes (that would be me)” (p. 8, l. 3) and because of his title as a professor.
In this text the intended audience is the students who are just about to graduate. But the text can also send a message to everyone who reads it, which would be the implicit audience, because we could all learn to be more