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AP LAng Commencement Speech
14
The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
Bernice Amankwah
Commencement Speech by J.K Rowling at Harvard, 2008
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Nahallah Champagne
Ashley Tom
p
INTRODUCTION
South
FUN FACTS
The original HARRY POTTER manuscript was rejected by 12 publishing houses before Bloomsbury picked it up.
The advance payment for the first Harry Potter book was only £1,500. Rowling’s net worth was estimated to be around $1 billion, making her the richest author in the world.
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In 2015, speech was adapted into an illustrated book, called Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination. Once again, the story was released to support Rowling’s charity Lumos.
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What makes a good commencement speech?
School
- Acknowledges the graduates
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“On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.”
- Creates an identification between the graduates and the speaker
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"Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said."
- Presents the world and its challenges
"Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools."
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- Instills hope
“Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower."
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Rhetorical Analysis
High
“ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, 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."
HUMOR
ALLUSION
“ Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion."
LANGUAGE
AND
FIRST HAND
EVIDENCE
SOPHISTICATED LANGUAGE
“These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
FIRST-HAND EVIDENCE
“I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes."
PATHOS
“Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone."
ETHOS
“Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become."
PATHOS AND ETHOS
ANTITHESIS
“Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral."
River
Connection
She's nervous and uses a lot of humor
"The weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight"
Her choice to talk about failure
We are all very privileged
Fight for what you believe in
Life long friendships
We Are....
TRS
WORKS CITED
Rowling, J.K. “Text of J.K. Rowling's Speech.” Harvard Gazette, Harvard Gazette, 5 Jan. 2018, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/.