The Last Lecture Analysis

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Randy Pausch is known for writing his famous book The Last Lecture. He wrote his book about his “last lecture” that he gave at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the two universities he taught at. In the book, there are many literary elements that he seems to hide. One of them is similes. Randy Pausch uses many similes throughout his book. Randy Pausch uses two similes in the first chapter of The Last Lecture. The first simile used by Randy Pausch is, “But being considered the best speaker in a computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs” (6). In this, he is comparing himself, who is considered to be the best speaker in a computer science department, to being known as the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs. …show more content…
Randy Pausch said, “Granted, at first glance I looked like the guy who’d take your order at a fast-food drive-through” (16). The author meant that when you first looked at him, he looked like he worked at a fast-food restaurant. He thinks he looks out of place or funny looking. Randy doesn’t feel professional standing in front of people in a Disney World polo shirt. The author feels as if people will not take him seriously if he is standing there in a shirt that most people would not have worn. Most people do not take fast-food workers seriously, so that is how the two connect. The next simile states, “The instinct in our house was never to sit around like slobs and wonder” (Pausch 22). Randy means that in his house, it was never acceptable to sit around and think on your own. His family was taught to learn out of books or from other resources. They could not just sit, think as to why something is the way it is or how something works, ask their parents, and get an answer. Randy’s family was a family who tries to think outside the box. His family seemed scared of having a reputation of not feeling smart or being creative. This is a family that wants to make a change and have a good result from whatever those changes are. In the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, he uses many similes. He likes to connect two and two together. Randy Pausch likes to step outside the