Steve Jobs Speech

Mitchell Wilcox

English comp.1001

Aaron Kerley

16 February 2016

Meaning of Steve Jobs

        What makes a person become so charismatic? Do people only listen when someone famous is talking, or does it take someone who uses excellent rhetoric to persuade their audience to pay attention more. Imagine if you combine these two forms of people into a famous businessman and entrepreneur and that man gives a speech that influences his audience in such a way that it changes their lives forever. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Incorporated and NeXT, is a perfect example a person who everyone wanted to listen to. His 2005 Stanford Commencement speech accumulates all aspects of great rhetoric and embodies key points in his life that can relate directly to his audience. Steve Jobs’ use of ethos and pathos contributes to his high effectiveness to his audience during his speech.

        Steve Jobs built up his company from scratch, when later on he was fired soon after Steve Jobs built up a whole new computer operating system that Apple then had to buy.  He had a talent when it came to designing processing systems that no one could take away because it was what Jobs had a huge passion for.  His reputation with his company and his driven attitude to making something that will impact everyone played a major role in his speech at Stanford because it gave his audience a reason to listen to him.  Although he never completed college, he was able to accomplish task that any businessman wouldn’t have dreamed of being able to accomplish without a college degree.

 “I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit” (Jobs 3).  During the eighteen months that Jobs dropped-in on classes was when he found his passion for what drove him.  He worked his way up from working in a garage to running a multi-million-dollar company in just a short span of his lifetime.  This gave Jobs a huge reputation that made people willing to listen because they want to know how you could become this successful. “…and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle” (Jobs 15).  Jobs believed in the idea that you should never settle for something that isn’t perfect if its what you love to do. His point is something that everyone should believe in, finding something that you love and never letting it go for something that isn’t perfection strive to complete something in the most effective way it can.

        Steve Jobs speech was set up into three different categories, with an extreme connection to pathos, moving the emotions of the audience. By explaining his life story and how he came to be the famous creator of apple.  “You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life” (Jobs 9). He brought up the point that everything that happens in life is nothing something that has a reason at the time, but may impact him later on in life.  Many people go through a stage during there lives when they aren’t sure what they are doing or why they are doing it, but in his eyes just because you don’t know the reason behind it doesn’t mean that it would help you grow to become stronger or more useful in the long.