This speech given by William Faulkner unites together students at University High School in Oxford to fight against the injustice that wishes to take over. He believes the graduating class has the ability to get past the powers he refers to in the passage, even though some only see this graduating class as the youth. To show that he is truly genuine in what he is speaking about, he makes useful references from history, powerful diction to describe the opposing forces and a consistency of his style of writing. Towards the end of the speech, Faulkner mentions men in power who have used people’s fear to their advantage in order to rise in leadership. He references Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin as these specific men that only seek power as tyrants, …show more content…
He uses negative connotation to describe the evils of the world, such as “war,” “injustice,” and “suffering.” In the next paragraph, he shows that he believes in “man’s capacity for courage and endurance and sacrifice.” These words are complete opposites from one another and shows his thoughts behind and the bias towards the powers that bring injustice compared to the youth that has the capacity to wipe out these tyrannical powers. These sets of words were purposely put together by Faulkner in order to achieve a sense of writing style similar to a pattern. It is evident in multiple occurrences that Faulkner has a consistent writing style he carries throughout the passage. He uses sets of at least three words to directly compare and contrast what he despises and what he wants the students to work toward. He believes that there is “injustice and rapacity and deception” in the world while the class of graduation students he is speaking to should fight against it with “honesty and truth and compassion.” This kind of writing is used to precisely describe his passionate feelings toward the situation at