This week I read “Attitude” which is a speech written by Margaret Atwood. Atwood is a Canadian novelist and is one of the most honored authors of fiction. This speech was written to an audience of college graduates where she gave her insight on life. Her purpose in the speech was to explain, using humor, that the student aren’t prepared for life, but it’s all about the attitude they express which will either make life great or terrible. She goes into saying, “I’m here to tell you that it’s an armpit out there. As for your university degree, there are definitely going to be days when you will feel that you’ve been given a refrigerator and sent to the middle of a jungle, where there are no three-pronged grounded plugholes” (Atwood 1). In this quote there is a lot of humor and an analogy. Quotes like these were found throughout the speech and it truly made it enjoyable. For this reason it was very effective and got her purpose across.
Another example of this wonderful humor can be seen when she says, “a liberal arts education doesn’t exactly prepare you for life. A preparation-for-life curriculum would not consist of courses on Victorian Thought and French Romanticism, but of things like How to Cope With Marital Breakdown, Getting More for your Footwear Dollar, Dealing With Stress” (Atwood 1). In this quote she effectively uses humor to add to the pathos of her speech. As a bonus she also expresses some credibility. She knows the courses are “Victorian Thought and French Romanticism” because she went through the same things as these graduates. So when she explains it, the addition of that information makes her speech all the more effective.
I’m not sure if this is a rhetorical device but Atwood talked about how she was writing this speech a lot. She talked about her thought process and why she talked about what she did. This is probably a strategy of some kind and I thought it was very interesting and useful.
I recommend this speech to anyone who is looking for a good TOW.
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