Rhetorical Analysis Of Elie Wiesel's Speech

Wiesel pinpoints the indifference of humans as the real enemy, causing further suffering and lost to those already in peril. Wiesel commenced the speech with an interesting attention getter: a story about a young Jewish from a small town that was at the end of war liberated from Nazi rule by American soldiers. This young boy was in fact himself. The first-hand experience of cruelty gave him credibility in discussing the dangers of indifference; he was a victim himself.

Elie Wiesel strives for peace in a tormented world and atonement for human dignity as he implores Ronald Reagan to reconsider his decision to visit a Bitburg cemetery, a site where graves of Hitler's Waffen SS were found. Wiesel, Jewish political activist and Holocaust witness, begins his address to President Reagan by setting his medal as a symbol inclusive of “all those who remember what SS killers have done”. Using an anecdote of his own personal experience, and a rhetorical question, Wiesel uses humour and an understatement to claim he learned “small things” over the last forty years; however, “the perils of language and those of silence” are anything but. This emphasizes the magnitude of their importance. His deliberate diction is evident

Indifference is more detrimental than people realize. Wiesel expresses his strong opinions about indifference by making the audience feel his words.

Wiesel uses opportune timing to impress the weight of his topic upon his audience and encourage them against staying

Elie Wiesel enlightens his audience of the injustice Roosevelt submitted Jewish refugees to. Wiesel exclaims that he doesn't not understand if, "Roosevelt was a good man, with a heart." Wiesel questions the indifference in the president of the free world and why he didn't allow these refugees into the country. If Wiesel had not presented this information to his audience about the root and extreme problem of indifference in the country, do you think people would have realized just how terrible the problem is and how neglectful we are of our

During his early life, Elie Wiesel was placed in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In January of 1945, Wiesel was moved with his father to the Buchenwald concentration camp. This happened to be the place where Wiesel’s father passed away. On April 12, 1999 Elie Wiesel delivered his speech “Perils of Indifference” at the East Room of the White House.

Wiesel concludes that practicing anger or hatred at least begin and continue in response of some kind, whereas “Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end.” It causes men to lose their humanity and become a deformed barbaric

In 1945, Wiesel’s family was deported to an Auschwitz extermination camp for slave labor. Wiesel’s speech was set in the white house as part of the new millennium lecture. He starts off by directing his speech to the President, Mrs. Clinton, the members of congress, Ambassador of Holbrook, and excellences. However, the speech was intended to educate any listeners or readers about the perils of indifference.

Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor who strongly believes that people need to share their stories about the Holocaust with others. Elie Wiesel was in concentration camps for about half of his teen years along with his father. After being the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust he resolved to make what really happened more well-known. Elie Wiesel wrote dozens of books and submitted an essay titled “A God Who Remembers” to the book This I Believe. The essay focused on Elie Wiesel’s belief that those who have survived the Holocaust should not suppress their experiences but must share them so history will not repeat itself.

When Wiesel said, “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. (115)” it revealed how little there was left of him after the camps.

In the years of the Holocaust, darkness shadowed the Jewish people. They were forced to be ripped apart from their families, they were starved to the point of death, and they were overall dehumanized. These traumatizing events inspired Elie Wiesel to write his memoir, Night, which caused him to give a detailed record of the horrors of humanity that he endured. This also played a part in his speech “The Perils of Indifference”. Unfortunately, the world is not filled with light.

When the young boy asks, “Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent”, (paragraph 5) again the audience is prompted to emotionally respond. They have to realize that it was all of them, all of us, who remained silent and that this silence must never happen again. Wiesel demonstrates a strong use of pathos throughout his speech to encourage his audience to commit to never sitting silently by while any human beings are being treated

Although indifference can be very dangerous, Wiesel begins to explain how good things have happened in this century. By using a counter argument, it shows Wiesel knows a lot about this topic, which also makes him more

Mr. Wiesel does an impeccable job of addressing his audience in a way that captivates

They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it”; in the camps the prisoners existed, but with nothing to live for, which is a horrifying image (The Perils of Indifference 2). Infusion of these types of quotes, Wiesel can elicit uncomfortable emotions from the audience with these incredibly gruesome descriptions.