George Saunders gave this speech to his 2013 graduating class at Syracuse
University, at which he is a professor of creative writing. Saunders uses many
different strategies to help convince the college graduates of his argument that
everyone needs to try to be kinder human beings earlier in life. Through the use of a
personal tale, defining the facts behind kindness, humor, and a solution to the
problem he proposes, Saunders presents a fair argument to his audience.

While, not his first piece of information, Saunders's tale about a girl who was
bullied in his class is the real beginning to the meat of his speech. He uses a fairly
drawn out tale about his early school life. While it was a good introduction to the
ideas he would talk on later in the paper, it seemed to drag on a bit too long, leading
to hypothetical questions regarding the imaginary conversations between the girl
and her mother. Considering the audience of young people who just spent four years
listening to old men ramble on for just too long about unimportant bits of
information, he may have done well to have moved on to his point a bit sooner. The
tale did address many good points though. He makes sure to try and be as general
about the specifics as possible, keep them relevant to any time in the past 75 years,
and when he did go into trends long passed he made sure to justify them with an
explanation of why that detail would have been important 50 years ago. All and all
the tale wraps up perfectly transitioning into the next piece of evidence: the
definition of kindness.

Into the second part of his argument, Saunders gives us reasons for why we
aren't more kind to begin with, and what it means to be kind. His simple numbers
format works well at this point in the paper, especially coming off of his long tale of
what it looks like to not be kind. The three pieces all feel false when the listener first
hears them, but with time all of them start to ring true in the listeners mind, not as a
conscious effort, but as something deeper. Saunders addresses this in his closing
thought before moving on to show kindness demonstrated. In this situation, he
adheres really well to the states of definition, and keep his audience in mind, he
knows the providing a means for how to judge our kindness will only strengthen his
argument in a few minutes, especially when he begins to talk about the growth of
love as we age. Next he begins to outline what it means to show kindness. This is the
lowest point in his argument. Instead of just saying that these are some things to
think about, and here are some solutions to that problem, he points out that it is
hard, says that praying is a good thing, and then talks about old people. While he
does answer the question to some extent near the end of the speech, Saunders, for
the most part, dodges the question he just proposed. This is somewhat of a common
strategy used in arguments, especially in modern political circus, but to propose a
question that you know you cannot answer is undermining his argument to the
audience. College students what, to some extent, even though they say they want
independence, to be told what they should do. This feeling of being lost in the world
with only fog ahead of them is common and Saunders does not appeal to this way of
thinking that his audience goes by. Instead he uses humor and laughs off the idea
that a conclusive answer exists.

Speaking to a group of millennials is hard, in that the attention span is short
and the absorption rate is low. Knowing this, a correct amount of humor applied to
the argument will increase the knowledge intake, keep his audience more aware of
his propositions, and strengthen the authority behind his argument. The first two
make sense, because the slight deviation from fact and opinion can have the desired
effect of making the next fact or opinion more likely to be recognized and processed
by the student's brain. However, the third may seem more obscure to someone not
familiar with the way a young person thinks. As is evident by popular media outlets
that present the news in more unconventional ways, like The Colbert Report, Youth
both respect and respond more to humorous ways of discussing events or topics
that might be heavy or serious. Saunders obviously knows this and uses it to his
advantage.

While I did previously say that Saunders dodged the question he proposed on
how to become kinder, this is not entirely the case. As he nears the end of his
speech, he addresses his thoughts on why he thinks people become more kind, as
they grow older. His only offering of a solution is to expedite this process, making
the person more mature in kind. Being that the argument is coming to a close it
would seem that Saunders would want to finish on a strong note. The note he
chooses, however, is too light- 'hearted. He revisits all the things he lists at the start of
the paper (and effective bookending tool), but fails to give the listener the real
impact that his argument needed to be entirely effective. From the point of view of
the college graduate, he would have had a strong start, but toward the end, the
attention and authority he commanded would be slipping away.

While ultimately his argument started strong, far better arguments have
been made for the continued growth of kindness in the world. He, having been a
creative writer, may have relied too much on his own hubris and failed to address
the logos that many of the graduates would have needed to be fully convinced of his
argument. While his use of a tale, definition, humor, and his arguable solution are
well intended, his audience would have ultimately not found it to be compelling
enough to be entirely convencing.

