Rhetorical Devices In Schindler's List Speech

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Cortney Leigh
Mrs. Wenshau
Famous Speech Analysis

Schindler’s List Departure Speech Analysis In the speech, “Schindler’s List Departure Speech,” Oskar Schindler honors the strong will of the people who made immeasurable sacrifices during the Holocaust, and he informs his factory workers why he must flee. Schindler supports his claims by asserting that he has been deemed a criminal for his employment of Jewish people in his munitions factory, therefore, he is believed to have been profiting off of slave labor. Prior to making this address, Nazi Germany had been wreaking havoc in Europe and was egregiously devastating the Jewish population through the horrors of the Holocaust in World War II. The event that finally pushed Schindler to give …show more content…

One appeal in particular that Schindler nailed in the head was pathos. Throughout his address, Schindler commemorates the lives of both the living and fallen Jewish people during the Holocaust. Additionally, Schindler pulled at the heartstrings of his factory workers when he stated, “Tomorrow, you'll begin the process of looking for survivors of your families. In most cases, you won't find them” (Schindler’s List). Here, Schindler confessed to the workers the harsh realities of their situation; however, the way he expressed this fact made the workers melancholy but not defeated. Another appeal that Schindler touched base on was logos. In his speech, Schindler made skillful use of logic and reasoning to state a counter-argument and then utterly disprove it. An example of this is when Schindler directly addresses the Nazi guards and tells them that now is the perfect time to exterminate all of the Jewish workers, but then he refutes this argument by proposing that it would be better to return home a man than a murderer. Thirdly, the last appeal that Schindler taps into is ethos. By claiming to be a member of the Nazi Party himself, Schindler proves that even Nazis can be civil to Jewish people. Also, being a member of the Nazi Party gives Schindler more weight behind his words since the Nazis were one of the groups that were generally seen as powerful and almighty during World War II. Altogether, Schindler strategically fulfilled his purpose by tuning into the three appeals associated with persuasive

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