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Chase Wagner
Betsy Woods
English 111
September 4, 2014
Finding Bliss in Life: A Speech by Barbara Walters
This speech was given by Barbara Walters to the 2012 graduating class of Yale
University. She opens her speech by sharing a piece of advice from a former professor - "Follow
your bliss and you will truly be successful". She goes on to ask the audience how many of them
feel that they know their bliss. Few people raise their hands.
Barbara uses a lot of warrant by sharing anecdotes about her college days. She speaks of
leaving college and finding what you love to do. Her goal in this speech is to inspire her
audience of college students to go out into the real world and find bliss.
Walters talks about interviewing political figures and asking them about their bliss. She
recalls when she interviewed Barack Obama and asked him about his bliss. He responded that he
had followed his bliss by becoming a community organizer. Barbara says that in an earlier
interview, Obama said that he had a number of aspirations when he was younger, but the last
thing that he had expected was to be the President of the United States. He told her that he had
finally found a use of himself.
Barbara continues to recount the interviews that she has had with public figures and the
lessons that she learned from them. By giving her speech credibility and using quotes from her
interviewees, she is appealing to ethos. She tries to relay the lessons that she has learned from
these interviews to her audience.

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Towards the beginning of her speech, she discusses choices and an interview with Hilary
Clinton. She asked Mrs. Clinton about the biggest choice shes ever had to make. Hilary
responded by saying that the biggest choice of her life was staying married to her husband in the
midst of political scandal. She said that all she knew was that her husband was the most
interesting and fully alive person she had ever met. The lesson that Walters is trying to convey
here is stated by Clinton in her interview: We are born alone, we die alone, and the life that we
make, the journey we take, is really up to us.
Barbara then shares her experiences with the Dali Lama. She recalls how he taught her to
be more compassionate and warm-hearted. She says that after practicing his teachings she felt
exceedingly boring but that it was not a lesson wasted, she still tries to incorporate compassion
and empathy into her life.
Next in her speech, Walters talks about friendship and tells the audience that the friends
that they have made in college will continue to be a part of their lives. She says to treasure
friends and to not lose them. In this part of the speech, she is really appealing to pathos. She
knows that the audience can relate to what she is saying, as they have undoubtedly made friends
while at college. In this way, she is using warrant.
Barbara speaks about balancing a personal life and a career by referencing Katherine
Hepburn. She recalls that Katherine had said that she could not have had a good career and
marriage when she began her job as an actress. Katherine said that she had lived as a man by
doing whatever she wanted, sustaining herself financially and never being afraid to be alone.
Walters recalls that Katherine said that to have it all wouldve been impossible. She said,
welcome to the life of choices.

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Walters then recounts her interview with Margaret Thatcher and how to live with failure.
Margaret told Barbara that she would have failure in her life. Barbara then recalls how she was a
complete failure when she first started as a co-anchor at ABC. She says that the best thing that
happened to her was that she had to work her way back. She tries to convey that failure makes
us stronger. After her story about Katherine Hepburn, Walters then tells of Christopher Reeve and
how he found happiness after becoming paralyzed. She says that when he was lying in the
hospital, Robin Williams visited Christopher. Williams pretended to be a doctor and told
Christopher to roll over which made him laugh. Christopher said, If I can laugh, I can live.
Barbara says, His life, though very hard, had meaning and purpose.
Walters wraps up her speech by telling the audience not to worry about finding their bliss
and that bliss will find you. She says to trust your gut and remember that decisions are ultimately
ours alone to make. In general, Barbara uses a lot of pathos to persuade her audience to not be
afraid of the real world. She employs the use of multiple anecdotes, which give her more
credibility. She shares the lessons that shes learned as a way of informing her audience of the
ways in which she has found her bliss.