Neil Gaiman Commencement Speech

Act: Commencement speech at University of the Arts
Agent: Neil Gaiman
Purpose: to give the graduating students advice and inspire them to enjoy what they do
Scene: University commencement, some kind of auditorium, speaking to students and professors
Agency: standing at a podium and speaking into a microphone


I really enjoyed this speech and noticed many ratios between the act, purpose, agent, scene, and agency.  The two I chose to focus on are the ratio between purpose and agent and between scene and agency.
Neil Gaiman was an appropriate agent for this speech because he is a successful artist. He has written many well-known books, movies, and comics.  Mr. Gaiman has experience in the art world and knows what it takes to make a name for oneself.  His being an artist connected with his purpose because the purpose of his speech was to give advice to and inspire graduating art students.  He has the proper ethos to give this advice.  Gaiman tells the students to "make good art" no matter how tough life gets.  He knew what it was like to be a struggling artist just starting out trying to balance enjoying his job and making enough money.
The other ratio I wanted to mention was the one between scene and agency.  The scene of this speech was the University of the Arts and his audience was graduating students and their professors.  This relates to the agency because he was speaking at a podium with a microphone.  That set up is typical for this kind of speech.  Even though Gaiman was restricted to a podium he used facial expressions and gestures to enhance his speech.  He also used humor to make the speech engaging.