Topic > Three Life Stories: Rhetorical Analysis of Steve Jobs' New Year's Eve Speech

Before the outbreak of the “iPhone” era, Steve Jobs evaluated a New Year's Eve speech at Stanford University in California on June 12, 2005 His speech addresses three major stories surrounding his life, connecting the dots, love, loss and death, to help influence the graduating class of 2005. His speech has long remained an iconic one for the his famous quote, “Stay Hungry. Stay silly. From love to death, Jobs is able to chronicle his experiences and has the ability to logically, emotionally, and honorably express these journeys in his life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. Having been given up for adoption by his biological parents, Jobs was adopted by a couple, Paul and Clara Jobs, who later influenced his interest in electronics. In Jobs' early life, he attended Reed College in Oregon, but during his time there he realized that he had no value. He felt this way for multiple reasons: He was wasting his parents' savings because he had chosen a college with high tuition, and he didn't see how college would help him figure out what to do with his life. In 1976, after dropping out of college, Jobs met an old high school friend, Steve Wozniak, and began developing the Apple computer in the Jobs family's garage. Together, they were able to consciously revolutionize the electronics industry with their entrepreneurial company. After conceiving this company, they created multiple computers and a profit of $666.66 for each computer. They earned an annual amount of $774,000 and eventually, with the release of the second computer three years later, sales increased by 700%, reaching an annual amount of 139 million. After Apple launched many new models, sales were not enough to outpace competing companies, leaving appointed marketing expert John Sculley to believe that Jobs was hurting the company; therefore, putting Jobs in an inferior position, which led Jobs to leave Apple in 1985. Starting a new path was easy for Jobs, who quickly founded the companies NeXT Inc., focused on hardware and software products, and Pixar, which continued to created the first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In December 1996, Apple purchased NeXT and soon after, in July 1997, Jobs returned to work for Apple as interim CEO from 1997 to 2004. Jobs and Apple worked on rebuilding the company and launching different products. In 1991, Jobs married Laurene Powell and had three children: Reed, Erin and Eve Jobs. For Steve Jobs, 2005 was a big year. Jobs began the year by launching Apple's iWork productivity suite, the new Mac mini, and the iPod shuffle on January 11, 2005. Later, on June 6, 2005, Jobs announced that Apple would abandon Motorola's and begin using Intel processors in his future Macs. Steve Jobs discovered he had a pancreatic tumor and underwent successful surgery to remove it; however, it later returned and its effects were deadly. Before his death, Jobs resigned from Apple and handed over all responsibility to one of its executives, Tim Cook, in January 2011. Sadly, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, Jobs died at his home in Palo Alto , California on October 5, 2011. the speech had more emotional reasoning behind it, there were some rational facts that were announced in the opening speech. Since the story is based on his personal experiences, the whole story isa concrete proof of his life, the speech being a short autobiography of Steve Jobs, in which he mentions the most memorable stories of his life. Early in his life, Steve Jobs had the opportunity to attend college; However, he found that there was no value for him in attending university and dropped out just six months later. Although Jobs considered the college invaluable, Jobs stated in his speech, "Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country." Jobs considered taking this calligraphy class because it fascinated him. Jobs later applied his calligraphy skills, learned during his college years, to the production of the Apple computer in the late 1970s. “None of this even had a hope of having any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me." Toward the end of the speech, Jobs addresses the fact that he had pancreatic cancer: "About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7.30am and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. Jobs was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, after doctors found a tumor in his pancreas. “The doctors told me… that I should expect to live no more than three to six months.” After his hopes of living were destroyed by doctors and a supposedly “incurable type of cancer,” Jobs later received a biopsy and doctors were able to discover that it contained a rare type of cancer that was, in fact, curable. with surgery. When reading the keynote speech, Steve Jobs often emphasizes the credibility or authority of what he is mentioning to show that it is credible. Jobs himself is a very well-known, respected and successful entrepreneur. Jobs' success makes his speech credible. Not only is he an entrepreneur, but he is also an American business mogul, industrial designer, inventor, and media owner. During the speech Jobs talks about his company Pixar and the success it has had by saying this statement: "Pixar went on to create the first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world" .With this statement, Jobs shows that Pixar is a successful, well-known and credible company. This is an excellent example of ethics because Jobs uses the company's success in becoming the best animation studio to demonstrate that Durante can be trusted his speech, The Commencement Address, Steve Jobs states that the number of Apple employees and the amount they earn is this quote: "we worked hard, and in 10 years Apple grew from just the two of us in a garage to a $2 billion company with over 4,00 employees" (Jobs uses these statistics to show that Apple is a huge company that makes billions of dollars and has thousands of employees. These huge numbers often show people that a company is reliable and credible. Steve Jobs' speech relies heavily on emotional appeal to convey his lesson to the audience with the help of logical fallacies comes from the three stories he presents during the speech. In the second story where he talks about when he was fired from Apple, he mentions in these sentences “Your job will fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do a great job is to love what you do” in these sentences he appeals to the emotion of love, the love of work. He is trying to teach this lesson using himself as an example, he says that when he was fired from Apple the love he had for his job allowed him to start over. From here he begins to say that love for.