Bono’s address to the graduating students is both engaging and inspiring. He successfully utilizes elements of rhetorical anecdotes, rhetorical questions, historical allusions and powerful language.
Bono begins his speech with honest and personal anecdotes about his youth. He freely admits that he ‘Never went to college’. He goes on to ask the question,’What am I doing here?’. This intrigues the audience due to the fact that Bono has no formal third level education, yet he is giving a speech to newly graduated students. Bono explains how music ‘woke me up to the world’ yet many ‘rebels’ of the punk rock era would ‘wear the boots but they wouldn't march’. This reflects the lack in individualism and originality in the society that Bono will refer to further in his speech. I think that his honest confession about his youth will contrast the lives of the audience, hence creating a rapport t from the very beginning of the speech.
One of the main elements of Bono’s speech is the use of provocative rhetorical questions which engage the students in the thought process that Bono successfully conveys. He proceeds to question the students about their ‘big idea’ This question provokes the students to carefully analyse their future ambitions and ideas while at
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He does so by introducing powerful historical references such as slavery and segregation. He purposely chose these two issues as they make many Americans feel distressed and ashamed of their ancestors whom brought shame to their nation. By comparing the past and the present, Bono is reflecting the current situation in Africa where extreme poverty is wide spread. This allusion absorbs the audiences attention to the lack of help and the difficulty that was ignored by the past generations. This worrying notion of the current generation simply avoiding the suffering in Africa will hunt them in years to