Revisiting Death and Seeing Life, the Last Lecture.

The link to the video is here if it does not work (its giving me a lot of grief...):
Randy Pausch's Speech
Note: (T-0:00) indicates a time mark in the video.

Randy Pausch gives this speech on the TV show Oprah, as a visitation of his original speech given to his students at Carnegie Mel University in September 2007. The reason he gives this speech is because he is literally dieing of cancer, it is his last speech. (Usually this ‘Last Lecture’ is an hypothetical if the professor is going to die and has only one lecture left to give.)

Pausch does an excellent job of suspending his audience’s disbelief. The reason I say this is he is giving a persuasive speech and he has to suspend this to effectively convey his message. The suspension of disbelief comes from his strong emotional (pathos) and character (ethos) appeals. His message in this is ‘Look at me. I am a dying man but I am happy, strong, and still capable man and this is my message about life and how to live.’ Pausch provides evidence of his cancer (T-1:18) and relates it to his wife and kids, giving an even stronger pathos appeal. As he continues he also gives a demonstration of his physical fitness. (T-2:13) His audience shows support by applause.

The speech body starts after he breaks the formal presentation with his physical display. (T-2:23) He details his main points in a logical sequence and this provides a simple outline. From there he tells how he will help you achieve your (the audience) childhood dreams. Following this he begins with childhood photos that provides even stronger pathos appeals and connection to the audience. This allows him to make connections and provide stronger connections to the audience.

With clever use of humor Pausch keeps his speech very lighthearted. (T-6:30) This helps keep the audience engaged and working with him as he delivers points about obstacles and goals. He also details his personal feelings about objects (T-7:54) The speech continues to touch his points even while keeping the tone light. However creative use of tone and disrupting the timing allow Pausch to make a point about apologies
(T-8:45)

Pausch notes his points and details them well. By keeping the tone light he deals with a very morbid topic of his own death and mortality and delivers a powerful message to his audience. His creative use of his past and images, as well as his active pacing and talking with his hands allow him to fully connect to his audience. It’s clear he is making eye contact as well since his eyes are on others and not the camera.