David McCullough, an English teacher at Wellesley High School, in his commencement speech, advises the graduating class of 2012. McCullough’s purpose is to convey that the students need to take control of their new lives. He utilizes parallel structure, pathos and diction, and repetition to guide the students.
McCullough starts his commencement address in the form of wedding vows. He explains that graduating is a bigger accomplishment than getting married, because weddings are “one sided” and “insufficiently effective”, while commencement is “life’s great ceremonial beginning”. He recites his speech like a wedding, portraying how like a man and woman come together, “[a student] and [their] diploma [come together] as one”. He uses this parallel structure in order to compare two greatest achievements a student can earn in their lifetime; however, with graduating “[working] every time”, while weddings statistically ending in divorce half the time, students can proclaim that they have graduated without fail. The use of parallelism expresses how alike the two ceremonies are, because they will eventually occur to the students; however, as graduation is inevitable, marriage can end in divorce.
As he speaks, David McCullough starts to direct his speech to the…show more content… He claims that all the students in the graduating class are “exactly the same” and because of this “none of [them] are special”. He recites this over again after explaining to them that they are all ordinary even though they came from one of the best schools. He conveys this condescending tone in order to them to be unique and to think for themselves, because “if everyone is special, then no one is”. However, in doing this he is implying that because no single person is extraordinary, then every single student, teacher, parent, and child matter and is given a life to seize the best
