Jk Rowling's Speech Analysis

Hundreds of students, parents, and faculty members gathered and created an audience to witness J.K Rowling’s speech at Harvard University in 2008. J.K Rowling is a well-known author, famous for her Harry Potter book series, and much more. Rowling’s speech was well thought out, and delivered excellently, with three main points she addresses throughout the speech. The three points being: failure can lead a person to success, never give up hope on your dreams and aspirations, and lastly Rowling emphasizes the importance of imagination. Sometimes we fail to see that the obstacles in our life help shape the road to our success in the future, and Rowling points out to us that failures and obstacles is what helped us become successful , and to never ignore that.

From the beginning she pulls the readers attention, she uses a metaphor “Eventually being perfect day after day, year after year, became like always carrying a backpack filled with bricks on my back”(Quindlen, 296). This metaphor is the most significant part of her speech as she continues to refer to this metaphor throughout the speech. She uses this for the purpose of appealing to the audience in a meaningful, and personal way, creating a connection between her and the audience as most students, not only college students, can probably relate to the feeling of being heavily put down by something , not necessarily what she is talking about. Her use of pathos is what makes the speech so appealing and interesting, because she makes it so relatable and easy to understand.

The short story “Speech Sounds” is a science fiction story written by Octavia Butler. This essay portrays a central theme that really opened my eyes as well as many others. This theme is to never take your ability to communicate for granted. Communication is a huge part of our culture and civilization. I never truly realized how important communication really was until reading this story. Without it, we cannot express our feelings in a correct manner. Not being able to connect with other individuals results in it being very hard to cooperate with others, causing chaos amongst society. In a short amount of time, the world would turn on each other causing mass amounts of violence. Likewise, this is similar to the story “Speech Sounds.” There are many takeaways one can have after reading this story.

Another example of her usage of ethos is within her demonstrations of the emotions she felt towards these stereotypes, so the audience can understand what she’s going through. She greatly addresses this when referring to her childhood and family dynamics. She

Alexander H. Stephens was born February 11, 1812 and passed March 4, 1883. Stephens was an American politician during the United States Civil War. He was the Vice President for the Confederate States. He well known for his speech, the Corner Stone Speech also known as the Cornerstone Address. He delivered this speech March 21, 1861. Stephens reasoning behind this speech was to declare the continuation of slavery.

knowing that everyone in the audience will immediately be able to make a connection to the woman standing in front of them. Rowling clearly states that in her speech she will focus on, failure and imagination, which have completely opposite connotations, making the audience feel an entire range of emotions and getting them involved. Her purpose, ironically on the day of success for these graduates, is to focus on not only the “benefits of failure,” but what she identifies as “the crucial importance of imagination.” Her ethos is thoroughly convincing because these students have grown up encountering her novels either through the pages of books or through the screen of a film that came soon after. The Harry Potter series sold over 400 million

Ethos is the credibility, moral character, and experience of the speaker. In Mary Fisher’s speech she uses ethos to show her involvement and passion for AIDS. Mary Fisher was infected with the AIDS virus and her son contracted the virus at birth. In telling the viewers this she illustrated why she is so passionate about the cause. Another way she builds ethos is through her moral character. She does this by telling the audience she is concerned with the future of all

The element of ethos was brought up in the beginning of the speech when Stokely talked about condemning. He references that “the philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself. The black existentialist philosopher who is pragmatic, Frantz Fanon, answered the question. He said that man could not” ( 1). In order for a man to condemn himself, he would have to blame himself for his actions, sentencing himself to a punishment. Stokely states multiple different incidents in our history or present where a man could not condemn himself, but the most powerful was when he

In this essay I am going to study the similarities and differences of two different interviews that JK Rowling is in. One of them is JK Rowling being interviewed by an American woman about her childhood, the other is being interviewed on Blue Peter by the presenters and children.

Octavia Butler, the author of “Speech Sounds” and many other short stories, is a well-known author for her feminist point of view which might be attributed to her father who died when she was young and her mother taking on the role as the father figure as well as the mother figure. After the bus stop, Valerie Rye, the protagonist in this short story who goes by Rye for a lot of the short story, met Obsidian who Rye assumes his name to be; also, he used to be a LAPD officer. Rye immediately trusts Obsidian to drive her to Pasadena to see what is left of her family. In Octavia Butlers “Speech Sounds,” the men and women have reverse gender roles throughout this short story than we are used to because men in our world tend to have more power over women.

The hero’s journeys of Gilgamesh and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series shape the central characters and develop their qualities so they can rise to their station and overcome their difficult tasks along the way.

In the beginning of Davies speech he explains that he is an author and how being an author is more of a state of mind rather than a job. He goes on to say that he will be quitting his job as an author and pursue a new job. Failure is something that Davies believes will come with finding a new career but he tells the university students that failure is something that is easy to live through and that the only failure that breaks the spirit and that failure is the failure in life itself. The thing about that type of failure is that it does not just come suddenly, it creeps up on you and grabs a hold on you with you knowing. Davies begins to talk to about how this failure is considered one of the seven deadly sins and this one in

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become one of the most popular children’s series in the world over the past decade. Through these books children and young adults alike have delved into a fantastical world in which they explored the problems that their protagonist, Harry Potter, has faced. In Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the sixth book of the Harry Potter series, Harry dealt with the challenge of proving to his peers and professors that Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape were no longer trustworthy. Even so, Harry failed to realize that the author of the notes in his Advanced Potion-Making book was corrupt. In this book, J.K. Rowling uses point of view, style, and irony to demonstrate the need for people to be more analytical

Emma Watson, best known as a leading actress in the Harry Potter series, gave a speech titled “Gender equality is your issue too” during a HeForShe campaign at the United Nations headquarters in New York City during on September 20, 2014, in attempt to raise awareness about gender inequality. Throughout the speech, Watson attempted to persuade the audience in joining the HeForShe campaign by providing examples of those who have been subject to the burdens of gender inequality – however, this speech could be considered problematic due to Watson’s lack of credibility and failure to include all types of people in our society.

In 2008, author J.K. Rowling wrote and gave a commencement speech to the graduating class of Harvard University. Rowling aptly named the speech “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”. In this speech Rowling tries to convey the message that failing can be beneficial or an individual and that people should not be afraid to use their imagination. Rowling begins the speech with a reflection on what went through her mind while writing the speech and how the process affected her. During this time Rowling asked herself what she wished she had known at her graduation and came up with the two main ideas of this speech; the merits of failure and significance of imagination. Rowling explains the benefits of failure by using her own personal failure of living in poverty with her daughter and what that failure taught her. For the significance of imagination, Rowling describes it not in terms of how it helped her out of poverty, but of how it opens up people to the world and other individuals around them.