Rhetorical Analysis Of J. K. Rowling's Speech

J.K. Rowling is famous all over the world for her Harry Potter book series. In 2008, she was asked to be Harvard’s commencement speaker. She had two main messages to tell the graduating class. The first message was about how failure is an important. She also talked about how people always need to use their imagination in life. J.K. Rowling effectively conveyed her messages about imagination and failure by referencing her own experiences and using rhetorical devices to appeal to the graduates before the went on to real life. J.K. Rowling’s job as a commencement speaker was to give advice to the graduates that she had learned throughout her life (Fabry 1). To grab everyone's attention before she began her main points in her speech, she kept

Rowling appealed to people by showing her credibility and character to get them to believe and listen to what she said. It’s hard to give someone advice about life if the person giving the advice hasn’t had very many experiences, especially due to living too carefully. As she spoke, she used real life examples that she had encountered to show she had experience, and to show she could talk about how these shaped her life. Although most know her from her best selling books, not everyone knows of her not so glamorous past. However, this past shaped her life, and is where she learned a lot of her wisdom that she told the graduates. She talked about her own graduation day, “...I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock” (Rowling 1). J.K. Rowling was relating with the graduates by showing she was once in their position as well. She once was on the verge of real life just as they were then. Throughout the years that have passed since her own graduation, she has gained valuable knowledge that she wanted to shared with them to help better their lives and better themselves as people, which therefore betters the world. Mentioning past jobs that impacted her on a large scale showed that she had experience with all sorts of jobs. This also connected her better with some graduates who have work in similar jobs, and to explain she didn’t always just write books her whole life. In one job she had pre fame, she helped in an office translating letters from other countries, and helped people find missing loved ones that they left behind, so they could escape their country, and help expose their country (Rowling 3). This was a very impactful job for J.K. Rowling and it revealed her great character to everyone, because it showed she wanted to help people and allowed others to impact her. She has been and is always willing to make herself a