Steve Jobs Rhetorical Analysis

Steve Jobs lived a life unparalleled by the common man. Raising some of the most successful corporations from the ground up, being at the forefront of the technological revolution, and battling pancreatic cancer for a number of years were all things that he succeeded in accomplishing throughout his 56 years of life. He also happened to deliver a brilliant commencement address to one of the finest academic institutions in the world. Any college graduate in the audience that sunny afternoon at Stanford University was in for a treat. The irony behind the whole situation was the fact that Steve Jobs himself, although arguably one of the most successful men of the 21st century, never graduated college. “…this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation”, Jobs confesses immediately after he begins speaking. Throughout the speech, the experiences he shares with the audience all share a common theme; the pursuit of happiness will lead you down the road of success if you follow your intuition and do what makes you truly happy. He conveys this message with the use of a cause and effect analysis, contrast, and personal anecdotes. Personal experiences help to create and develop individuality. Steve Jobs learned this at an early age as a young man attending Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Job’s was not certain what he wanted to do with his life and was very indecisive when selecting a major. After six months he decided to drop out of school and found himself sleeping somewhere other than a place of his own. Jobs explains, “I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”(1) Initially it seemed somewhat odd for him to be mentioning a stage in his life that resembled the lifestyle of a vagabond. As he continues to speak, you realize he shares his college