Elie Wiesel Rhetorical Devices

Elie Wiesel’s somber speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, demonstrated the harsh reality of the numerous evils harvesting in the world. The main evil though was simply indifference, or a lack of concern. As a young Jewish boy, he faced the wickedness of the Holocaust, imprisoned at Buchenwald and Auschwitz and also losing both his parents and younger sister. The speaker saw atrocious horrors and suffered for a prolonged amount of time. Why was this permitted?

Nothing is sugar-coated. Everything is real. Elie Wiesel writes to inform. He informs the readers of what really happened and how it changes a person and he succeeds. Elie’s descriptive words of the gruesome events capture the moment and make the audience feel as if they too are a victim.

Lack of concern, lack of interest, lack of sympathy. These are all ways to describe indifference and none of them are good. Elie Wiesel made sure America knew that this is how they acted when the Jews were in desperate need of help. In the speech The Perils of Indifference Elie Wiesel uses hypophora, juxtaposition, and paradox to effectively elicit the guilt that should come from being indifferent. With hypophora, Elie is able to highlight the wrong doings that could have been avoided.

Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim” Wiesel also repeats other words throughout his speech as in a previous part of his speech, he repeats the word “God” as he talks about how it is always worse for someone to be ignored by God than to be punished by God. Wiesel uses repetition to complement his use of allusion and imagery.

On page 68 of Wiesel’s book, Elizer is beginning to rebel against his own religion, “But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament.” Elie’s reaction to the entire complication is reasonable; he thought his God was choosing to be indifferent like everybody else, so out of anger, he believed disobedience was a fair response. Although he was feeling more positive about himself, Elie’s opinions on the matter remained negative, he knew they weren’t going to easily escape the concentration camps. No matter the situation, the state of indifference always leads to a negative

The second speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, by Elie Wiesel directly addresses people with a high position in the world of U.S. politics at the time of the speech deliverance: President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, members of the Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, etc. However, there is an underlying message to people who are bystanders. Evident in multiple points of his speech, Wiesel consistently addresses how being a bystander is an undesirable, negative position. He goes on to use how the Jewish people felt during the Holocaust towards God and their lack of response of any kind from him as an

Wiesel’s purpose is to inform the world in order to accomplish compassion in the future for those suffering injustice around the world. He establishes a critical tone for readers by using stylistic devices such as pathos and repetition in order to develop his message

However, disregarding the predicament in Syria is only prolonging the poor education and without any action against those participating in violence, they are only going to do worse until they are stopped. In addition, indifference is conveyed in the speech “The Perils of Indifference” by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor who was taken to a Nazi concentration camp at a young age for extraneous manual labor without proper nutrition. He took what he learned from his experiences and the outside knowledge he has on the subject now to speak on the Holocaust as a whole. In this speech, he states, “Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end.

Indifference is a lack of interest, concern, or sympathy; to be indifferent is to not care about the struggles of anyone but yourself. Most times, indifference is portrayed as a bad thing that does nothing good to anyone. In the CommonLit article “Elie Wiesel’s ‘The Perils of Indifference’ speech” Elie Wiesel, describes some thoughts that he has on indifference and its effect on history. Elie Wiesel agrees that indifference is a bad thing that should be addressed because it always benefits the aggressor and never the victim, it reduces others to an abstraction, and it’s what makes humans inhuman. First and foremost, the aggressor is like a school bully.

He creates a thankful, serious and informative tone for the politics, ambassadors, members of congress and to Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. Ultimately, it's important to be aware of indifference so we can make a change. The general argument made by author Elie Wiesel is that indifference is horrible. More specifically, Wiesel argues that “indifference is a friend of the.”

Wiesel brings out syntax for the ending of his speech but also incorporates pathos wrapping it all back together with the sadness and pity on all of us for the harmful silence done to the jews in the holocaust. Syntax was the most obvious rhetorical device used because you can physically see how it is being presented differently than the rest but also sending a message and not being so formal about it. Pathos was a very huge part to Wiesel’s whole entire speech as he was constantly trying to turn everyones thoughts and perspectives to what he was exactly seeing in his own eyes. Elie Wiesel wanted to show the world the horrible act of indifference and how it has personally affected him as a child and for his whole life growing up. Wiesel manages to create many viewpoints and to throw us in his shoes for us to understand the inhumanity of the ones had no sympathy towards the jews during the holocaust.

Elie Wiesel: Effectively Delivering a Crucial Message In his speech, The Perils of Indifference, Elie Wiesel expresses his gratitude for the American soldiers, while addressing mankind’s habitual indifference. He claims that despite the amount of violence happening in our world, “[it] is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes” (Wiesel). Wiesel effectively speaks to his audience using mixed syntax, intelligible diction, and earnest tone that not only pertains to those present, but also can be understood by a wide range of people all over the world. The powerful message about how indifference is damaging our society could not be conveyed in a more exceeding

Wiesel’s speech shows how he worked to keep the memory of those people alive because he knows that people will continue to be guilty, to be accomplices if they forget. Furthermore, Wiesel knows that keeping the memory of those poor, innocent will avoid the repetition of the atrocity done in the future. The stories and experiences of Wiesel allowed for people to see the true horrors of what occurs when people who keep silence become “accomplices” of those who inflict pain towards humans. To conclude, Wiesel chose to use parallelism in his speech to emphasize the fault people had for keeping silence and allowing the torture of innocent

When explaining his history as a young boy, Wiesel emotionally triggers his surrounding crowd and explained what was the cause of this horrific situation called indifference. Wiesel’s goal with describing his past life is to help his audience have a better visualization. Later in his speech, Wiesel defines that same word, “What is indifference? 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.” (Wiesel 2).

Elie uses hyperbole, personification, alliteration, and many other poetic devices to make people feel the emotions that he felt. One will easily feel paralyzed when reading this powerful