JK Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter series. Although these works are by far her most well known Rowling has written an array of many other works under pseudonyms as well as her own name, JK Rowling in this essay is giving a commencement address. This role requires her as a speaker to establish herself as greatly wise and experienced, this is achieved through some degree of automatic ethos because of her widespread fame and success.
The audience in this piece is the 2008 graduating class at Harvard University. The address relates two two core anecdotes from Rowling's own life. She opens her essay describing her own experience in college. Establishing a connection with her audience, as well as making a handful of witty comments and jokes relating to her more famous Harry Potter books and the typical college experience. JK Rowling moves on to explain her own experience in college. She recognizes that this may be a foreign concept to many of the people in the room, being that they are graduates of Harvard University. She explains her experience first out of college, when after her marriage fell apart, she was left penniless with just about nothing. She recognizes the pain failure can cause but also says that she made rock bottom the solid foundation of her new life. Detailing not only the importance, but also the inevitability of failure. She explains that failure allows you to learn more about yourself and those around you as well as bring out many positive traits you may have not known. After this Rowling then builds off the power as imagination, briefly mentioning how imagination was what sparked her success, but immediately after stating that the true power of imagination is in empathy. She details her experiences at amnesty international and all the terrifying and inspiring moments she encountered.
Rowling's purpose is fairly direct in this essay. Her first and overarching purpose is to provide her audience with what she feels is the most important advice and wisdom she has to offer. She calls for the graduates to not be destroyed by the failures she feels they will face, and be shocked by, as well as urging them to do what they can to make a better change in the world. Rowling's final call is summed up in one of the last lines of the essay "we have the power to imagine better." Rowling then concludes the essay wishing her audience very good lives and thanking them.
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