57 pages • 1 hour read
Jeffrey Zaslow, Randy PauschThe Last Lecture
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Section 1, Chapters 1-3
Section 2, Chapters 4-5
Section 2, Chapters 6-7
Section 2, Chapters 8-11
Section 3, Chapters 12-15
Section 3, Chapters 16-19
Section 3, Chapters 20-22
Section 4, Chapters 23-24
Section 4, Chapters 25-27
Section 5, Chapters 28-31
Section 5, Chapters 32-34
Section 5, Chapters 35-37
Section 5, Chapters 38-40
Section 5, Chapters 41-45
Section 5, Chapters 46-50
Section 5, Chapters 51-55
Section 5, Chapters 56-58
Section 6, Chapters 59-61
Key Figures
Themes
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Section 6, Chapters 59-61Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 6: “Final Remarks”
Section 6, Chapters 59-61 Summary
This last section is about the most important people in Pausch’s life: his wife and three children. He admits that his most of his sadness about dying has to do with leaving his kids without a father, and so this lecture is an opportunity for him to leave something behind for them as a gift. He has learned that people who have lost their parents very young have found it consoling to know how much their parents loved them. He learned from his own mother and father that “a parent’s job is to encourage kids to develop a joy for life and a great urge to follow their own dreams” (198). This is the central message of his last lecture.
Section 6, Chapters 59-61 Analysis
These final chapters are the most heart-wrenching, as Pausch lets his guard down and tells the audience, with brutal honesty, what has been weighing on his heart as he has faced his own mortality. He pines over the very real possibility that his children’s memories of him may be fuzzy because they are so young, and he imagines all the wonderful life experiences they will have without him there.
Even though an academic’s last lecture is usually a professor’s opportunity to pass on their wisdom to their students, Pausch openly admits that this whole presentation was a head fake.
