Hope Despair And Memory Rhetorical Devices

Diction refers to Wiesel’s distinctive style of expression. He uses the words “murder” and “consumed” to describe how he feels. This accurately portrays how the camp had changed him. He no longer looked to God for answers. He felt alone from his first day in captivity. There was no freedom or happiness in his life anymore. Death became imminent and insignificant. He was surrounded by men and watched each one become nothing more than bone and flesh. But liberation came only with strength and endurance. Even those who were physically prepared didn’t necessarily make it. He repeats throughout the entire memoir the phrase “never shall I forget…” to emphasize the horror of the Holocaust.

The message that is sent across in this speech is also something that makes it so effective. Wiesel’s goal is not only to inform the people of the horrible events of the Holocaust, but also a call to action. This call to action is to end indifference throughout the world. Wiesel tries throughout the speech to inspire his audience within the White House, as well as the people of the world to act in times of human suffering, injustice, and violence. Within this call to action, Wiesel argues that indifference is an action worse than any other. Even anger, according to Wiesel, is a more positive action than indifference. “Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.” When Wiesel states this simple, yet powerful statement, it forces any listener to consider how negative of an emotion hatred is, then puts indifference well below it. Wiesel also addresses how easy it is for any person to be indifferent. He states, “Of course, indifference can be tempting—more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims.” This quote

“If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene (The History Place).” If the guards knew what was happening or if any of the prisoners would tell, all of the prisoners would have had a higher chance of living because they told someone that had power then this whole thing would have been shut down a long time ago. Pathos is brought up throughout Wiesel's speech by telling the idea of being indifferent. “Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest (The History Place).” This brought up how the prisoners were all the same and could not have anything different or ordinary about themselves and they are all left as meaningless. Wiesel states facts, or logos, throughout his speech telling how things actually happened and the meaning of things. “Etymologically, the word means ‘no difference.’ A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil (The History Place).” Wiesel relates what indifference means throughout his speech by saying that

Wiesel does a wonderful job with his use of pathos throughout the speech by making the audience reflect on his words and creates a strong emotional reaction for what is being said. From being a survivor of the Holocaust, one of the darkest parts of history as well as the most shallow times for humanity. Immediate sympathy is drawn from the audience. When he states that himself endured the horrible conditions these people had to live in. He then explains to us that the people there, “No longer felt hunger, pain, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.” With saying this it brings forth feelings of guilt, one of the most negative emotions to accumulate a reaction towards these events. Also numerous people throughout the world long for world peace and to hear the inhumane acts that was once acted upon an innocent man, makes their stomach's sink. Wiesel defines its derivation, as “no difference” and uses numerous comparisons on what may cause indifference, as a “strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur.” Like good and evil, dark and light. Wiesel continues to attract the audience emotionally by stating this he is aware of how tempting it may be to be indifferent and that at times it can be easier to avoid

In the beginning of the speech Wiesel explains his childhood. He uses imagery to paint a picture in the audience’s mind of what it was like to live in a war-torn country. He states, “Fifty-four years to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe’s beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald.” (Wiesel 1) This makes the audience think about what he just said and where Wiesel came from. It also makes the reader feel

As said by Audrey Hepburn; “Living is like tearing through a museum, not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can’t take it in all at once.” In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the Holocaust took place in an order of layers. As time passed, the extremity was increased each chapter he succumbed to. Elie expresses raw emotion in his memoir, Night, and leaves you in a complete, utter state of wonder and sadness. Not only this, but remembering and cherishing the importance of all the emotions from this time in history. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the theme of remembering is present before the Holocaust and in today’s society.

Elie Wiesel’s speech falls into the deliberative genre category, and was designed to influence his listeners into action by warning them about the dangers indifference can have on society as it pertains to human atrocities and suffering. The speech helped the audience understand the need for every individual to exercise their moral conscience in the face of injustice. Wiesel attempts to convince his audience to support his views by using his childhood experience and relating them to the harsh realities while living in Nazi Death Camps as a boy during the Holocaust. He warns, “To be indifferent to suffering is to lose one’s humanity” (Wiesel, 1999). Wiesel persuades the audience to embrace a higher level of level moral awareness against indifference by stating, “the hungry children, the homeless refugees-not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope, is to exile them from human memory”. Wiesel’s uses historical narrative, woven with portions of an autobiography to move his persuasive speech from a strictly deliberative genre to a hybrid deliberative genre.

In this passage Wiesel has become more overtly angry with God. He no longer hides behind the reverence he has grown up knowing. Rather he is openly charging God with not only the destruction of the Jewish people, but also with continually plaguing their thoughts. Having the false hope that God may one day save them seems like a cruel joke. Wiesel seems to be saying that if God has already decided not to save them, than the least He can do is quit allowing the people to pray to and follow Him.

The general argument made by Elie Wiesel in his speech “The Perils of Indifference,” is that we need to open our eyes and realize that not everything can be sunshine and flowers all the time. More specifically, Wiesel emphasizes that the world needs to be aware and to empathize towards the victims of those of us that have

In conclusion, Elie Wiesel wants us to know the terror of this world and how people shouldn’t focus on one thing they should focus on other things as well that are happening around the

When Wiesel first arrived at the concentration camp where he encountered the first selection and babies being burnt to death, he infuriated, "Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust... Never” (34). Here, Wiesel enraged toward God who merely observed innocents being burnt to deaths. This passage was where Wiesel doubted God's presence for the first time and where his faith in God aggravated. He not only repeated "Never shall I forget" to underline that the Holocaust and its sin must not be forgotten, but also to assert that he was now in a world without the God's presence, the world with merely the evils. Through using the repetition and powerful phrases such as, dreams turning to dust or God and soul being murdered, the quote delivered extreme profundity and intensity when one loses his faith in God. Again, in page 87, Wiesel used repetition to stress his change of faith in

In Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Weisel asserts the grief and despair to whom families died in the Holocaust. Wiesel first empathizes on the past events through a strong Paths, he then describes the pain of the Holocaust by use of Ethos and to conclude he makes it crystal clear of the fear from the camps by the use of Anaphora. Wiesel’s purpose was to show his honor and sympathy towards getting this award. He seems to have a mixed race and age audience in mind because this terrible event put a cloak of darkness around the Jews and Wiesel is taking it off with the use of his diction and tone.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” The repetition of the phrase “Never shall I forget” really emphasises on and illustrated that what Wiesel is describing will be engraved in his memory forever, that it is impossible to forget. I also think that he wants to spread the word about what happened in the holocaust, raise awareness and make sure that nothing even remotely like it ever happens again.