"The Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"

Artifact: Last Lecture (Speech) “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”
Rhetor: Randy Pausch
Audience: Physical audience was the students and teachers at Carnegie Mellon. The rhetor’s intended audience, as he states at the end of the lecture, is his children.
Background: Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon is given the opportunity to give a lecture called a “Last Lecture” where the professor is expected to reflect on their life as if they were dying. In the case of Professor Pausch he has terminal pancreatic cancer. He decides to give this lecture as his truly “Last Lecture”.
Rhetorical Analysis: The objective of the speech is to “impart wisdom” and Randy Pausch has a very unique and effective way of doing this. One of the most obvious tactics used by Pausch is his use of humor. Every minute that professor Pausch is on stage he has the audience laughing. He is constantly smiling and laughing himself, thus keeping the audience engaged. Another effective tactic is his liberal use of props. There is a moment where he speaks about a innovative program he pioneered at Carnegie Mellon, and to make a point he brings out a vest with arrows sticking out of the back. This is an excellent way to keep the audience engaged and drive his message that “when you do something innovative you will take those arrows in the back” (Pausch). Repetition is also another rhetorical device employed by Pausch. He constantly refers back to the title of the talk, driving his point that childhood dreams can all be achieved. He also expands on this by repeating other common ideas and motifs. “The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something” as well as the “head fake” are used throughout the speech. It is actually the “head fake” the he himself used in this talk, revealing that although the speech was intended for the physical audience he was really speaking to his kids, and not about dying but about living. I know that I have only scratched the surface of professor Pauch’s incredible use of rhetoric in this speech, but I hope that it has given you all an idea of it.