how does this hook grab peoples attention?

Question

Here we stand my fellow classmates! 17 or 18 years of life, and 13 years of schooling behind us. We have all the bumps and bruises of adolescence, and perhaps the barest hint of wisdom gained from them. We have a world-class education or the very least a world-class ability to fill in little bubbles labelled A to D. [laughter] We stand upon the cusp of infinite possibility, and how can we not be envied? Not for what we have, or what we have done but what we still have to do. Ahead of us is life, ahead of us stand all the years we have yet to live, the experiences we have yet to know. We are just embarking upon this grand adventure. Our whole lives up until this very point have been fairly ordered and straightforward. Each year of schooling leading logically to the next, our purpose and path clearly set and defined. But here we stand, of boundless freedom and potential, each to live a life that is solely our own.

My classmates, today is the first day of the rest of our lives, but so was yesterday, and so shall be tomorrow, and so shall be each day after that. The decisions we make each day steer the course of our lives, and this never ceases to be true. Destiny is not preordained. Grand statements and rousing speeches do little. It is easy to be filled in with hope and excitement, and simple state that your life shall be great. It is easy to forget how you feel right now and fall into quiet complacency. The next thing you know, five years are gone and you are no nearer to your dreams. To achieve success, the definition of which is different for each of us, you must strive each day to move forward. We will not always succeed immediately, but that is no matter. A lack of success only becomes failure when you allow it to defeat you. Even to never succeed in the goal is not a failure, only to give up without truly trying. Sometimes there is luck involved or factors beyond our control on the achievement of our goals, and it is natural that our dreams shift and change with time. We are always better for having pursued them.

One definition of success is the ability to look back upon your life from your deathbed without regrets. You don’t want to live your life wondering what could have been if only you had borne down and pressed onward through the adversity that the world invariably brings. At the same time, we all make mistakes and we cannot allow ourselves to be so caught up in the past that we forget about the future, or the present. When I say to live without regrets, I also mean not letting the moments pass by. Those special minutes, and hours and days that will remain with you for all of your life. It is easy to have a limb in each: the future and in the past, and ignore the present. But the future is only the present to come, and the past is only the present gone by. If you forget to stop and look around, you are left with little of either.

So, I ask you, my classmates to look around. Look at yourselves, and see the journey that today is the culmination of, the journey that began as the parent will remember on that first day of kindergarten so long ago. Think of the things you’ve learned, how you have grown in every sense. Think of how distant today seemed on that first intimidating day of grade 10, or even in the September of this very year. Just as fast as today came it will be gone into memory, so cherish each moment. Look around and see the faces of your peers, your classmates. Perhaps you’ve spoken to each other before, perhaps you haven’t, but you know each other. You know each other because you know yourselves, and all of us today – we are the same – the same caps, the same gowns, the same diplomas. We are all Bellerose, we are all Bulldogs, we are all filled with hope. Though paths might differ, we are all equal in that there are limitless possibilities before us, and those possibilities will remain limitless so long as we choose to keep them so. It might not be easy, but that’s what makes the reward worth it. We have a long journey ahead of us, but we have already come far. Today is the day to celebrate with you family, your friends, your classmates, your peers. It is more than a celebration of high school for today we gather to mark an important milestone on our path. Ahead of us stands life, my classmates, and all its beauty and grandeur. Ahead of us stand the people we are to meet in the places we are to go. Ahead of us stand those we may love and the families we may create. Ahead of us stand the dreams we are to realise. Ahead of us stands life. Let us go through it boldly and without regret.

Ahead of us stands life – let’s live it!

Answer 1

A rhetorical device is the narrative device of the journalist's lead or the main sentences that contains the major questions of story: The who, what, where, when, why, and the how constitute the hook or the attention-getter of a story, a speech, a film, or a poem. The start of a story or narrative has a main job, which is to capture the reader's interest to glean the writer's or speaker's purpose. The rhetorical device of the hook is to inform, to explain, to entertain or to argue, or to to describe.

Answer 2

Hi Diana,

The hook in this speech uses the common experiences of the audience, a graduating class' shared academic conquests, as well as some topical humor, to capture the attention of the audience. People like listening to things that they relate to personally or that is in some way familiar, which is why the anecdotal hook also works well in similar instances (i.e. where you tell a short story with a relatable occurrence/moral to gain the audience's attention).