The Perils Of Indifference Rhetorical Analysis

Writer, Elie Wiesel in his metaphorical speech “The perils of Indifference” argues that the future will never know the agony of the Holocaust and they will never understand the tragedy of the horrific terror in Germany. Wiesel wants people to not let this happen but at the time many modern genocides that are occurring and people shouldn’t be focused on just the Holocaust, they should focus on making this world a better place; moreover, Wiesel expresses his thoughts about all the genocides that has happen throughout the years. He develops his message through in an horrifying event that took place 54 years ago the day “ The perils of Indifference” was published. Wiesel illustrates the indifferences of good vs evil. He develops this message

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 any powerful speech, the speaker communicates and relates directly to his or her audience. Elie Wiesel does a superb job of doing this in his Perils of Indifference speech, given in April 1999. His use of pathos

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.

Elie Wiesel has given the listener a wonderful opportunity to feel the intense movement of his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”. His speech is centered around the need for vigilance in the face of evil. Throughout this speech, with which he moved so many, he shared his experience with being sent to Buchenwald, a concentration camp, the treacherous conditions in which they were living, and the way that indifference has separated human beings. He explained, that through anger and hatred a great poem or symphony can be written, because “One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses.” (Wiesel, 1999/16, p. 78). The three strategies that will be explored throughout this analysis are ethos, logos, and pathos.

The world is cruel and harsh; what does it take to prove that you and your experiences are capable of persuasion. In this world, you’d want as many allies as possible, and building emotional bridges with others is a definite way of proving that you matter to others. It’s a matter of philosophy; human nature emphasizes on individual existence; therefore rhetoric is effective to measure one’s importance. Elie Wiesel, a man of age, is a jewish holocaust survivor who has a story to tell and a story to be heard. Does the man have what it takes to prove himself worthy of a rhetoric leader? Elie Wiesel’s speech, The Perils of Indifference, Mr. Wiesel takes advantage of rhetorical questions and the appeals of pathos and logos to persuade and inform the audience about their inner indifference towards the havoc happening around the world.

Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor and successful writer and speaker. He’s written a very popular book, Night and speeches that also get Elie’s message across. While his book Night and his speech Perils of Indifference both illustrate indifference, it’s displayed in different ways. The effects, pain and suffering from the holocaust were described in the book and all this was due to indifference which was communicated through the speech. The two texts have common similarities, but also many differences as well.

“He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again”. This quote stated by Elie Wiesel from his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, refers to the day Elie Wiesel got liberated from the Holocaust when he was young. The Holocaust was just one of the many horrific tragedies that occurred during that century. In hopes of changing the future for the better, Wiesel decides to deliver a speech about helping the victims of injustice. He gives this speech intended for the President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, and friends hoping that they will make positive changes for the future. By using rhetorical strategies such as anaphora, rhetorical questions, and ethos, Wiesel tries to help the victims of injustice and prevent future tragedies from happening.

“Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end.” (American Rhetoric). This is a sentiment that Elie Wiesel pushes throughout his speech, The Perils of Indifference. Elie Wiesel was a Romanian born, Jewish writer, and was a survivor of the holocaust (Berger). In his speech, The Perils of Indifference, he discusses how indifference has hurt him, and everyone throughout the world. In this speech Wiesel uses appeals to pathos to make his argument effective. Examples are scattered across the speech to make it more appealing, and provide real world context for what he is arguing about. The last of the rhetorical choices the speaker makes is definition, in this speech Wiesel defines indifference, and uses this definition to prove why indifference hurts people. In Elie Wiesel’s speech, The Perils of Indifference, he argues that indifference hurts people, and his argument is effective by using various rhetorical choices.

Forty-two years after entering the concentration camp for the first time, Elie Wiesel remarked, “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope” (Nobel Lecture 1). This means a lot from someone who endured almost two years of the terror in the WWII concentration camps. During these two years, Elie endured the sadness of leaving his former life and faith behind, the pain of living off of scraps of bread, and the trepidation of the “selections”, where he almost lost his father. He watched the hanging of innocent people, was beat by Kapos and guards time after time, and marched in a death march right after having a foot surgery. Through all of this, he survived because he remained hopeful. Hope was all the Jewish people

On April 12th 1999, in Washington D.C., Elie Wiesel gave a speech during the Millennium Lecture Series that took place in the East Room of the White House. The speech was given in front of Mr. Bill and Mrs. Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and other officials. Elie Wiesel is an author most noted for his novel Night, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and political activist. In the speech he spoke on his view of indifference and explained how it was negatively affecting humanity and the nation as a whole. The Perils of Indifference was a speech that successfully used ethos, pathos, and logos to inform, persuade and inspire its audience on its views.

In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie Wiesel is a young boy who struggles to survive after being forced to live in the brutal concentration camp of Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, death and suffering is rampant, but due to compassionate words and actions from others, Elie is able to withstand these severe living conditions and overcome the risk of death in the unforgiving Auschwitz. As shown through the actions and words of characters in Night, compassion, the sympathetic pity for the suffering or misfortune of others is critical to the human experience because it enables humans to empathize with each other, empathizing which allows us to feel the need to assist others which can often be vital for survival.

In the world during the time of the Holocaust, there was indifference towards the suffering of millions of Jews. When individuals reflect about the Holocaust, the majority of the time the responsibility of the terrible events is placed upon the perpetrators. However, bystanders and witnesses indirectly affected the victims of the Holocaust as well. The silence of these people played one of the largest roles in the Holocaust, they influenced it by avoiding any type of involvement and by becoming blinded towards the suffering of others. In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel says, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. This exert from his speech reveals the importance

“We had forgotten everything- death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die… We were the only men on Earth.” These powerful words of Elie Wiesel were used to recount the suffering of a Jewish person during the Holocaust. Similar accounts abound throughout the story of the Holocaust, which is arguably the most widely known genocide in history. The Holocaust was the mass murder of more than six million European Jews (along with gypsies and other people deemed “undesirable”) in concentration camps by the German Nazis from 1941-1945. It is a narrative of a human injustice at the hands of a government, but it is also one of resilience and the refusal to be silenced. Historians have pieced together the story of the Holocaust predominantly from the perspectives of its victims because their firsthand accounts of the event provide a new point of view that contributes in narrating its story. Through the eyes of the victims, we catch a glimpse of what it’s like to be denied basic human dignities, to be forced to abandon all that you previously knew to get away from those who intend to kill you, and to feel helpless as the circumstances you’re under tear your family apart.

After Wiesel’s freedom was so rightfully restored, he mediated to himself that he could not sent back to the tainted memory of what happened in his hometown. Rather, he went to France to reconvene with his two older sisters that withstood the horrors of the Holocaust (Goldman, Horn, and Kerner)5.During his time in Paris, Wiesel proceeded to take classes at the Sorbonne. While taking the classes, he engrossed himself in the field of journalism (“Elie Wiesel Timeline . . .”)6.In due time, Elie found a job as a correspondent for an Israeli newspaper, and he began to circumnavigated the world for his livelihood. It was up until that time where Wiesel would decline to speak about what he witnessed in the appalling event that is the Holocaust (Goldman, Horn, and Kerner)7.That is, it was not until he was persuaded by Francois Mauriac that the people of the world are ready to listen to the damnation of what he experienced. With a bountiful number of stories to write, he started with the one that would portray his perspective of the Holocaust (“Elie Wiesel”)8.