In his 2013 commencement speech, 'Advice to Graduates', George Saunders delivers an amusing
story as he asks a troubling question: why aren't we kinder? His advice to the graduates of Syracuse
University is, 'Since according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and
more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now'. He encourages the graduates to
pursue life to the fullest and at the same time, he reminds them that as they age success and failure will
mean less than the impact of love and kindness, both given and received. This speech is relevant to the
population in general and is timely for the graduates as they start their journey into the real world. His
informal style and use of terms like 'old fart' are designed to relax and entertain the audience while
portraying himself as a traveler on their same journey. The author uses a well structured
series of questions, answers, and observations to help the audience feel like they have participated in a
conversation with the speaker without having said a word.

From the onset of the speech, Saunders uses humorous tone and feints to keep the audience
guessing if he is actually delivering a traditional commencement speech or is just having fun with them.
For those in the audience expecting a traditional speech saturated with insight and the keys to unlock the
mysteries of corporate America and beyond, they may be disappointed. On the other hand, for those
listening carefully for a deeper message there is value and instruction. At the very least stories of monkey
poop, congratulations, and regrets of an old man will keep the audience entertained.

The author pokes fun at the format of the convocation process by referring to the typical speaker
as an over the hill 'old fart' who shares nuggets of wisdom learned from 'dreadful mistakes' made
during his life to a group of young people. Given the irreverent description of the process,
one would expect Mr. Saunders to veer from the cynically illustrated version of the traditional
convocation speech; however, he announces that he intends to follow and 'respect that tradition'.
He then continues into a humorous depiction of himself and his peers as a group that is
typically viewed by the students as a source of money and comical traditions. No matter if he and the
other old folks were asked to or not, they would gladly share their regrets with anyone. He then proceeds
to do exactly that by posing the question 'what do I regret?' aloud to himself when knowing full well that
the audience has no choice but to sit and listen. Fortunately, the speaker shares an
interesting list of experiences that most folks would likely regret including swimming in water
contaminated with monkey poop. After discussing each experience he ponders aloud if he regrets them
and comes to the conclusion that he does not. This catches the audience off guard because they were
expecting him to regret the less than ideal experiences.

After surprising the audience with his lack of regret, the author catches their attention by
announcing that he does regret a different experience. With this he abruptly transitions to a serious
message where the author shares his thoughts about his character flaws in a way that most people can
relate to. He does this to drive home his point about kindness and the lack thereof. The speaker is able to
get an emotional response from the audience by recalling a childhood story where he admits that his lack
of kindness led to another child suffering. There were multiple opportunities to go out of his way and
show kindness but instead responded, 'sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly'. This story proves to
be powerful because the author still has an expression of guilt and regret on his face forty years later. At
this point he has described a behavior flaw that many people likely have, and with a deft question he was
able to include the audience into his story about the suffering child and make them empathize with him.

He punctuates and pivots the story with the simple phrase, 'Now the Million dollar question:
What is our problem'? At this point in the speech, the author uses 'we' and 'our' instead
of 'I' and 'me.' The audience probably did not notice that the author engaged them with the simple
transformation of story from 'his' to 'ours'. The subsequent part of the speech continues as a discussion
in the form of more questions, answers, and observations of what is wrong with 'us' and what we can do
to make things better. By using implicit and explicit questions and answers, the speaker explores why
humans are not naturally kind to one another. Through conjecture about the human condition, references
to Darwin, and an intellectual discussion about mortality, the author concludes that all people are
basically selfish even though no one wants to be. At this point, the author makes the assumption that
everyone wants to be better but struggles with acting it out. Instead of just offering the answer as a
lecturer would, the author asks another 'million dollar question'. Of course, he answers
his own question by first congratulating himself on asking a good question. Perhaps as an attempt at
humor, he then throws the audience another curve ball by stating there is not enough time to answer the
question properly. However, when he says this, he is only a little beyond the halfway point in his speech
and does answer the question. So again, he tugs at the audience emotionally by hinting that he will leave
the second million dollar question unanswered.

The speech continues with an uplifting and insightful list of topics and tasks that the students can
do to fix the 'failures of kindness' he identified earlier in his speech. He is, to some degree, offering a
solution to the problems that life presents to those who pursue success and wish to have some balance in
their life. This will likely be the majority of the group; however, this could also mean that some students
may not enjoy or see relevance in this speech.
The students that are focused on performance and success instead of balance are likely to reject
this message. This message may even offend some of the students because they may think that the author
is labeling them as selfish if they do not work on being kinder. He is able to appeal to this group in a way
when he encourages the group to 'do all the other things, the ambitious things ' travel, get rich, get
famous, innovate, lead' .' However, this is the next to the last paragraph of a speech that
is almost 40 paragraphs long, so the message may not get to the high performance type personality.

For the student who is interested in developing a balance in their life, this advice is convincing,
well crafted, and useful. At the initial reading, the material was entertaining while delivering a clear
message that held the attention of the audience. After reading the speech again carefully, the depth of the
advice and the cleverness of the writing style are noticeable, and it is convincing from both an emotional
and logical perspective. In conclusion, the author presented a great message in a way that kept the
audience interested and involved by transforming an old mans boring lecture about regret into a
conversation concerning everyone's journey to kindness.

