Albert Einstein Rhetorical Analysis

Success. Seven letters, two syllables, and essentially, the goal of almost every person to walk the planet. The interesting thing about success is that it isn’t a set in stone goal, but an ideology. With each person, success is redefined, argued, and tried. Success comes in different forms and levels, but at the end of the day every person who has been deemed successful mentions one word: failure. Yet, it isn’t failure in of itself that produces success, but the determination and desire to work through it. Failure can only indoctrinate when an individual decides to work past it and improve from it. Often, however, the strenuous process of failure and grit is glamorized, and the true factors that play into success are forgotten. For example,

Albert Einstein is a genius by every definition. Einstein, the mastermind. The man who changed the face of mathematics and science as we knew it. What about Einstein the persistent? The driven? Albert Einstein failed relentlessly, but is only honored for the success he had, not his indefatigable efforts. Einstein endured through hardships, responded to difficult experiences with determination, and demonstrated traits of grit throughout his failures and achievements.
In the same way you don’t think everyone you meet will be successful, you have also probably wondered subconsciously if certain people will be downright failures.

That notion, happens to be the way Albert Einstein was perceived throughout his whole childhood. Future generations find this ironic because they know of his later accomplishments, but Einstein spent a majority of his life believed to be rather incompetent. He didn’t speak his first word until the age of four, and it wasn’t until the age of nine he could speak fluently. Most people thought he had a mild learning disability, and teachers described him as slow. His grades reflected indifference and he was expelled for “rebellious behavior.” Einstein was refused admittance to his dream school, Zurich Polytechnic. Not to mention when he finally found a school that would accept him, his grades were poor and his professors never took him seriously. From day one, no one had any high expectations for him, and he was destined to be a dropout selling door-to-door life insurance. Yes, he even considered it at one point. Nevertheless, Einstein graduated. Depending on the perspective in this story, one might call his success in later years sheer luck based on his childhood. Yet, it wasn’t luck, but endurance. Einstein went through his whole life believing he would amount to nothing, and being told likewise. But by simply refusing to accept the fate everyone had presumptuously laid out for him, he exceeded far beyond

expectation.
Einstein lived his life in a way that projected the idea that we are not defined by our failures, nor our successes, but the attitude we have towards both. So what did he do? What did he do when he almost flunked out of school? He graduated instead. What did he do when his certificate was rather useless? He worked until it didn’t matter. What did he do when his father died believing he was a complete failure? He made sure he didn’t die a failure to himself. Einstein responded to every curve thrown at him by throwing a curve ball back. He refused to give up and worked many abnormal jobs around the clock until he was hired as a patent clerk. Einstein fell in love with mathematics, and in 1905 his work was published in the most elite physics journal. His response to difficult times was to keep moving forward. Later Einstein would continue to overcome trials in his life by winning a Nobel Prize and being credited to revolutionizing science and the understanding of the world. His accomplishments would exceed beyond his life, as his research was eventually used to build the atomic bomb.
Above all, Einstein modeled grit. In 1922, after winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, this description was written of Einstein’s work ethic, “Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping stones for the next advance.” Yet, what was most remarkable about Einstein is his perseverance did not cease after he accomplished something, but increased. After years of intense research, Einstein became mentally and physically exhausted. When World War Two broke out he was forced to put his collection of work, over a span of years, on hold. But he spent every day of his life trying to prove himself wrong and better the future of science. Albert Einstein was the definition of grit.
So instead of success, failure. Behind the scenes of every successful man is the story of perseverance and rising to the occasion. Or in Einstein’s case, behind the story of a bad student laid the man who reinvented the history of physics. To redefine success, failure must also be redefined. Einstein is credited to an impressive quantity of knowledge and achievements, but also so much more. Albert Einstein endured through hardships, responded to difficult experiences with determination, and demonstrated traits of grit through his failures and accomplishments.