Rhetorical Analysis Of The Commencement Speech By Steve Jobs

The commencement speech by Steve Jobs will always be remembered as an inspiring and influential piece of work. Steve Jobs gave this memorable speech in front of the Stanford graduating class of 2005 at the University itself. Though Jobs may have only been talking to the graduating class at the time, his speech reaches far and wide to any and all who listen. His purpose for the speech was to inspire those in the crowd to always push forward and lead them in the right direction for the rest of their lives. Jobs’ speech was very effective in drawing in the listener through his use of the pathos and ethos appeals. He uses his own life examples as his evidence, while using strategies of argumentation such as cause and effect, narration, and even

He explains how even though he was at the top of the world at a time, it all was taken away when he was fired from Apple at the age of 30. After contemplating giving up, he realized that technology was his passion and he kept at it. He created NeXT and Pixar which were eventually bought out by Apple giving him his original position back at Apple (Jobs). This turn of events showed that even though he thought he had lost it all, he continued to keep pushing hard for what he believed in because he knew his career was going to be a part of his life for a long time and it turned out for the better. In this section Jobs’ uses a little bit of pathos and ethos because he went through traumatic and depressing times, as well as triumphed and became the CEO of both Pixar and Apple in the end. His dedication to his passion showed that by continuing to work he was able to achieve what he wanted. This is true for anyone, that is why so many people can identify with his speech, therefore making it so inspirational for such a large amount of

The most obvious downside is that even though he tries to make it seem more reachable through his “normal” experiences, he was a very gifted thinker who earned a large amount of money after his first technological breakthrough which made following in his footsteps hard to achieve. So by overgeneralizing that everyone can follow these steps and achieve success is where Jobs made his fault. Despite this slight hiccup in his speech, Jobs makes sure to allow the listener to follow along very easily with the structure of his speech. He does not go into very elaborate stories that would confuse the reader or go off on a tangent. Instead, he simply uses three events in his life that he felt were important in shaping him into the person he is. These instances in his life show that he is just as human as anyone else listening, yet look at what he has accomplished with life despite these many obstacles. At the time of death Steve Jobs was reported have a net worth of nearly a whopping 10.2 billion dollars (Dodds). This not only helps show that his stories have worked for him, but that even a slightly following his advice could pay out in a big