This speech was written during the rise of Apple. The company was very prominent at this time. Jobs was most likely asked to do this speech because he was head of very successful company and could encourage students even though at some times in his life he failed he ended up leading a great life. Jobs was very poor as a child and had to live off a sparse amount of money. He barely had enough money to go to college because he came from a working class family. He struggled a lot until he found what he wanted to do.
Steve Jobs uses very simple structure in this speech. He starts with an introduction and then goes into three stories about his life. He organizes it to tell his three stories while connecting them all in the conclusion to prove his point to do what you love to do. To “Stay Hungry” and “Stay Foolish”. His sentences are very simple as he introduces each story. Jobs’ develops his themes and ideas by using anecdotes from his life in attempts to inspire the graduating class at Stanford.
In paragraph twenty one there is a turning point in his speech. Job’s talks about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He utilizes this information to emphasize the message of his conclusion. “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Don’t settle. Take chances. Be the best version of yourself every day because you never know when it will be your last.
In his speech Jobs uses simplistic language the whole time despite the fact that he is talking to college graduates that are more than capable of understanding more complicated language. He could have very easily made his speech much more complicated but instead decided to make it more conversational as if it were just an everyday conversation he was having. He does this to make himself seem more relatable as a way to help the graduates realize that Jobs is no different from them and he was successful so there’s no reason they can’t be successful also.
In this speech jobs uses repetition with the phrase “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” encouraging the students to pursue what they want to do and stay young and foolish. Jobs also uses an antithesis in line 41 “If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in”.
Steve Jobs utilizes symbolism when he says, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” By this he means not to literally stay hungry, but to stay wanting more. Wanting greatness. Never being satisfied. And not to literally stay foolish but to stay open minded and to take chances.
When Jobs says “The first story is about connecting the dots,” he is using a cliche to deliver a message.
This speech starts with a very inspirational and upbeat tone as it is at a graduation Jobs is trying to motivate these graduates to pursue their dreams. Then from lines 6 to 84 the speech slowly gets less and less upbeat. By line 85 the story becomes very somber as Jobs begins t talk about his cancer diagnosis explaining he was told he would die six months later. But it begins to regain its inspiration when Jobs states he is cancer free. Though his cancer eventually came back, at this time he was very optimistic about his life. At the time he found out he had cancer he states his wife was there with him the whole way.
This speech is filled with humor such as in line 97 where he states “I didn’t even know what a pancreas was while talking about finding out he had pancreatic cancer. This joke tries to lighten up the mood. The sad irony in this speech is that Jobs told the audience he was cancer free at this time but he sadly ended up dying not much later.
Jobs uses ethos in this speech by talking about his personal experiences with cancer and this also uses pathos because you feel sorry for him. He uses pathos as well when he talks about when he was fired from Apple even though he was the creator of it.
“In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.” Jobs reaches the logical conclusion that after his dismissal at Apple he starts a new company that would be competing with Apple, later they buy NeXT for 400 million and brought Jobs back to Apple displaying that Jobs was a big part of Apple.
