it can be easily solved and even carried around in the wallet.

Among the purposes implied by these paragraphs are the following:

• Mockery of the grand, lofty, portentous topics of many commencement speeches.
• Mockery of the self-important tone of many commencement speakers.
• Mockery of the typical rhetoric of many commencement speeches, such as the common emphasis on facing a major choice in life.
• Comic juxtaposition of different styles and attitudes, as in the contrast between the self-assurance expressed in the first paragraph and the self-doubt and hesitation expressed in the second.
• Comic juxtaposition of “high” culture and “popular” culture, as in the reference to Nietzsche preceding a reference to The Beatles.
• Comic contrast between the beginning of a sentence and the conclusion of the sentence, as in the final sentence quoted.

Other implied purposes of this speech might include the following:

• The speech gives Allen a chance to display his humor, wit, and whimsicality.
• It gives Allen a chance to display his knowledge in a way that is non-pretentious (partly because it pretends to be pretentious).
• It gives the audience the pleasure of recognizing how Allen is mocking and subverting so many of the well-known conventions of commencement speeches.

Woody Allen’s text “My Speech to the Graduates” is a parody or burlesque of a standard graduation speech. Allen’s text is not a conventional essay, with a main argument and supporting sub-arguments; rather, it is a piece of good-humored mockery of a typical commencement address. Allen supports the main purpose of the essay in a number of ways, including the following:

• He opens the piece with four sentences that allude to well-known clichés of graduation speeches. The first sentence is entirely a cliché. The second parodies the cliché about one path leading somewhere, although it is unlikely that any real graduation speaker would ever end this sentence as Allen does. The third sentence mocks the cliché about the second path, but again no graduation speaker in his right mind would phrase this sentence as Allen does. Finally, in the fourth sentence, Allen returns to a total cliché. What we have here, then, is a cliché sandwich: a cliché in sentence one, two totally unlikely ideas in sentences two and three, and finally another cliché in sentence four.
• In the second paragraph of the piece, Allen mocks the cliché of a graduation speaker wanting to make his precise motives exactly clear, although no real graduation speaker would ever speak the words Allen writes here unless he were jesting, as Allen is.
• In the third paragraph, Allen mocks the typical cliché in graduation speeches that calls of the speaker to mention “the predicament of modern man.” Allen also parodies the cliché that calls on the speaker to allude to famous thinkers of the past and present.
• Paragraph four parodies the cliché that calls on the commencement speaker to express complex ideas in simple ways so that those complex ideas can be more easily understood.
• Paragraph five is a parody of the standard expectation that at some point the graduation speaker will allude to modern science.
• Paragraph six parodies the cliché in which the speaker argues for the utter complexity of the human soul.
• The next three paragraphs return to farcical meditations about modern science.
• In the next paragraph, Allen brings in yet another standard topic of commencement addresses – religion:

Religion too has unfortunately let us down. Miguel de Unamuno writes blithely of the "eternal persistence of consciousness," but this is no easy feat. Particularly when reading Thackeray.

In other words, practically every single paragraph in Allen’s piece helps support the main purpose of the work. That purpose is to offer a funny parody (rather than a serious analysis) of graduation speeches.

Woody Allen’s work “My Speech to the Graduates” is less an essay than an innovative parody of graduation speeches. Allen’s work doesn’t really seem to have much of a serious “point” – at least not one that is explicit or debatable. Rather, Allen for the most part seems simply to be having fun himself while also trying to amuse others. He has written the sort of speech that no one would seriously give (or give seriously). Part of the fun of the speech is that it is almost impossible to take it seriously.

Consider, for example, the sheer number of topics the speech covers – although “covers” is not quite the right word, because rather than exploring fully any of the many topics he mentions, Allen merely alights on each for a moment and then buzzes off to the next.  He mentions practically every platitude and every “profound” issue it is possible to think of, but he writes merely to mock, and even that may be too serious an assessment, since the piece is less an example of serious satire than of light-hearted comedy.

Partly, too, Allen is having fun with his own famously insecure and self-doubting persona, as when he writes,

I speak, by the way, not with any sense of futility, but with a panicky conviction of the absolute meaninglessness of existence which could easily be misinterpreted as pessimism.

When reading this speech, it is almost impossible not to “hear,” in one’s mind’s ear, Allen delivering it (see the YouTube link below for an example of Allen speaking). In its faux-intellectual, self-deprecating, assertive-yet-immediately-uncertain tone, the speech is almost a perfect example of the way Allen usually presents himself, both in his written work and in his films.

If the speech has a serious “point” at all, perhaps it is to mock the over-seriousness and self-importance that sometimes creep into graduation speeches.

In this piece, which is both darkly funny and serious, Allen, writing in 1979, ponders humankind's position at a crossroads, poised between survival and annihilation. He also wonders about the meaning of life. He writes that science can't solve our problems, even if it has put a man on the moon. Still, he feels that science can't peer into our souls. He also finds religion wanting and states that modern man is left only feeling alienated. Government also provides little solace in a society that is mechanized. Allen says that in this alienating world, we turn to mindless distractions like sex and drugs. His purpose in writing this piece is to advise graduates to look to love rather than hate and to avoid the pitfalls of our current existence, which is filled with soullessness in the midst of technological promise.

Woody Allen’s work of fiction titled “My Speech to the Graduates” is a parody of a high school or college commencement speech. It ruminates on a number of issues, including the following:

• The idea that humanity faces a choice between total hopelessness and complete extinction (a choice which doesn’t seem much of a choice but which is typical of Allen’s often dark humor). Allen hopes that humanity will make a wise decision.
• The notion that modern human beings face a crucial problem:

How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world given my waist and shirt size?

Here, again, Allen is obviously having fun with the tendency of commencement speakers to make “profound” statements.

• Other “profound” issues – such as the existence of the human soul, the nature of the brain, the value of science, the dangers of atomic bombs, the origins of the universe, the nature of mortality, the results of religion, the crisis of faith, the role of chance in existence, our obligations to others, the worship of technology, the failings of machines, the failings of politicians, the benefits of democracy, the dangers of terrorism, the risks of overpopulation, the shortage of energy, and the proliferation of drugs and pornography – are given the same kind of burlesque treatment.

In short, Allen takes an occasion usually associated with pomposity, bromides, and clichés, and mocks it by undercutting all our expectations and supplying plenty of whimsical humor. Rather than harshly satirizing commencement speeches, he takes all the faults of such speeches and pushes them to their (illogical) extremes.