Accepting death is not easy; one can feign his fear and desperation by appearing phlegmatic in the face of death, but his will take a while to actually accept the finale of his life. In the poignant yet inspirational essay, “Intoxicated by My Illness,” by Anatole Broyard, the author is informed about his prostate cancer, which changes his perspective in life and leads him to appreciate every minute things he has ignored before. Unlike most people who undergo the phase of despair and anxiety in the face of death, Broyard seems to quickly accept his imminent death, or he “ [turns] toward it.” (343) Despite the fact that his friends view such action as “courage,” he attributes his optimistic attitude to his desire, believing “[desire] itself is a kind of immortality.” (343-344) Broyard begins to live a new way, which is exemplified through his expanding gratitude towards his wife’s burger, his friends, and even his functioning body. Broyard is deeply “intoxicated by [his]…
being on the verge of death. “’Why is it always so sad?’ asked Mother. ‘Why all the disease?’”…
Getting through life achieving most of your childhood dreams is something amazing. It helps people realize that they accomplished something in their life period. Pausch was dying; and still managed to achieve most of his childhood dreams. Children always have dreams that they want to achieve when they get older and Randy Pausch persuaded them to do so, using ethos, pathos, and logos. Achieving childhood dreams is not impossible, it's just time…
Through her article, Mattern appeals to our emotions by using vivid descriptions of depression in order to get her reader to sympathize and gain awareness of how serious depression can affect our mood. In the article, Mattern uses pathos as an appeal to the reader when she explains, “I learned… about one in every eight women could expect to develop clinical depression during their lifetime. Many of these women I know. They are my friends, mothers popping anti-depressant pills and smiling numbly with an artificial happiness. They know no other way” (Mattern). Here, Mattern is successful in getting her readers to briefly acquire a visual sense of how depression…
During his lecture he describes six childhood dreams he had and what he did to achieve those dreams. While the lecture alone was powerful and thought provoking, knowing this was coming from a man with terminal cancer and the positive attitude in which he presents his life is truly inspiring to both students and teachers alike.…
Spending life wrapped in a coddle of emotions and experiences I cannot sort through I’ve set out on a journey to explain myself to you. Walking through life while collecting moments I fail to piece together I’ve created a litany of lessons and frustrations I’m attempting to share. None of this should be extraordinary news; I never climbed a mountain ( or completed other like physical feats) to find enlightenment, I’ve failed to create a technology which will save lives, I’m nothing special just a neighborhood twenty year old writing stories for you; nuggets of disdain, snark, discovery, and solitude. Twenty years on a planet is exhausting, I’m still not confident that adults can survive beyond this…
“Hypothetically, if you knew you were going to die and you had one last lecture, what would you say to your students?” That is how Professor Randy Pausch, from Carnegie Mellon, began his last lecture, a speech entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” while in fact he was dying of Pancreatic Cancer. He knew he only had months left to live and put together this last lecture to read to his students. His lecture focuses in on points such as the importance of: making sincere apologies, not whining, being gracious and being humble. To stress his thoughts and views on life and following one’s dreams, Randy Pausch used a great amount of repetition, metaphors, allusion, humor, ethos, and pathos in his last lecture.…
If you knew you were going to die and you had one last lecture. What would you say to your students? For Dr. Randy Pausch, there’s an elephant in the room and the elephant in the room is that for him it wasn’t hypothetical. It has now come back after surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation and the doctor told him there’s nothing to do and he has months to live. These are his most recent CT scans. The pancreatic cancer has spread to his liver. They’re approximately a dozen tumors. Even though he don’t like this but he can’t do anything about the fact that he is going to die.…
People put more value on their lives when they come close to knocking on the doors of death. For instance, those living with terminal illnesses like cancer, have a whole different perception of their life and all of life in general in comparison to someone who is living a completely healthy life. In his autobiography, Lance Armstrong said, “When I was sick, I saw more beauty and triumph and truth in a single day than I ever did in a bike race, but they were human moments, not miraculous ones.” Lance Armstrong is one of the most successful and accomplished figures in the world, yet even to him, a day of simply living one more day means more than any of his accomplishments while living with cancer. Having everything may make one value their life in greater depth but the fear of losing that everything they have worked for makes them value it even more however. While a person may assign the value to their life based on the obstacles they have overcame and learned from, society’s way of determining the value to a human life is not nearly as sensitive.…
As people approach the end of their lives, they with their families and their caregivers, face many tasks and decisions. They may be psychological, spiritual, or medical in nature, but all end-of-life choices and medical decisions have complex psychological components, ramifications, and consequences that have a significant impact on the suffering patients and their caregivers.…
Response 1(158): In this documentary they use the three rhetorical pathos, logos and ethos. They use these appeals to help explain the topic. They use pathos by following five students school life. Pathos is being used by showing how money and community problem can affect the student’s school career in so many ways. Also shows how the…
You would think a man dying of cancer would not be so happy and willing to spend the last few months of his life giving a lecture. But, Randy Pausch, who has 10 tumors in his liver, does not want people to pity him for having cancer. Rather, he wants to teach people how to follow their childhood dreams. Looking at the seven elements of communication we see how he is so effective in his last lecture.…
The day before Pausch gets his CT scans back, he tells his wife, “Today, right now, well this is a wonderful day.(115)” Even though Pausch knows that he might not live for much longer, he continues to live life to its fullest. This is really a “life’s what you make it” moment, and he chooses to make the best of how ever much life he has left. “This is the epitome of a person appreciating this day and this moment,” thought Robbee Kosak, Carnegie Mellon’s vice president for advancement, about when she saw Randy Pausch in his car, sometime after his diagnosis. Even in his private moments, he still was showing gratitude and appreciation for life in general. This is yet another instance where Pausch showed his persistent optimism and wonderful…
A very good morning to everyone present here today. I’m Bryan Ong from the Methodist Boys’ School of Kuala Lumpur. It is indeed a great honor for me to stand here today to deliver my talk. Before I begin my talk, may I ask you people to do me a favor? It’s pretty simple; just try to view this situation as though as it’s a picture. Tell me, what would you say from it? Exactly! You see a rather decent looking boy standing here trying to overcome his fear and deliver a talk. And behind me you see the theme of the talk today – words are not enough. Ladies and gentlemen, through merely a picture, such adequate amount of data can be collected already. Now, try to describe this situation, without a picture, and only with words. I bet you’re going to use up 2 pages just to describe me standing here. The thing that I’m trying to say here is that, sometimes, words are just not enough.…
Style: My professional card will be extremely present throughout this speech. However, I want my audience to realize that I not a person who is just spitting out facts. Rather more, I have emotions and feeling too that tie me back to this difficult subject.…