Save them J's

Jake Parsons

Mrs. Parkinson

English III

20 November 2015

Aspects of Writing Voice in Mark Bezos’ Speech

MarkBezos’ TED Talk about being a volunteer fire fighter employs techniques of narrative by showing a great deal of movement throughout the speech. He begins with discussing with the audience what being a volunteer fire fighter entails and what this particular fire was like. He provides imagery of this lady’s house smoldering in the rain, and how she is standing out in the street barefoot.  The topic begins to drift from the fire to small acts of kindness and how they can make a large difference in someone’s life, even if you don’t realize it. This shift from a memory to a greater, overarching idea that you shouldn’t wait to be a hero shows Bezos’ narrative techniques in his speech.

            His TED Talk also exhibits a great deal of perception. We see this in Mark’s observations of the lady in the rain. Instead of just seeing some person in the rain he notices that she is shivering in the cold and that she is barefoot. Unlike most other volunteer fire fighters, he realizes the importance of fetching the fire victim a pair of shoes. While most see it as a relatively trivial task, Mark Bezos understands how much a pair of shoes means to someone in that sort of situation. In the speech we see proof of this as he quotes a letter the lady in the rain had written to the fire department, “someone had even got her a pair of shoes.” Mark including this in his speech reinforces the perception he has as he found a life lesson in getting a stranger shoes.

            Finally, Mark Bezos likes to employ humor to keep the audience intrigued. For example, he talks about the fire fighter that got to the captain a couple of seconds before him and how he got assigned to go save the dog. He then says “The doooggggggg!” to show how jealous he is that that man can say he carried a living creature out of a burning building. This quick little laugh allows the audience to get an insight to how Mark perceives saving the dog as infinitely more important as saving something like shoes. However this emphasizes that he did a small favor for the lady that made a big difference to her. It focuses in on the small acts of kindness that go unnoticed instead of the big flashy favors.