Rhetorical Analysis Of Elie Wiesel's Speech

Wiesel addresses, “As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame”. Ellie Wiesel is conveying that there is always something that can be fixed or there is always someone who can be helped. Moreover Wiesel explains, “What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs”. Elie Wiesel’s central message is that by speaking out for the powerless, an individual can make a great impact and that there are people in the society that depend on the voice of others.

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.

It is important to know that the word Genocide did not exist in language and was coined in 1944 by a Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing) and was finally recognized by the UN General Assembly as a crime under international law in 1946 (Power). Wiesel presents the historical acts of indifference by the U.S. during World War II, when the president turn a ship full of Jewish refugees away from New York harbor, showing the world leaders that this was a choice between right and wrong, and indifference was the choice that was made. Wiesel does not condemn the U.S. but appeals to the logic in this presentation and then presents the lesson learned in Kosovo, when he says “this time, the world was not silent. This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene” (“Perils of Indifference”).

He appeals to his audience by using pathos present in his repetition of “indifference.” he explains that the neutrality of indifference “is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor” (cite) he works to convince the audience to end their indifference because it does more harm than good. By not actively working to help the oppressed those who are indifferent avail the aggressor. Throughout his entire speech, Elie Wiesel effectively argues the

Elie Wiesel is one of the many people in this world that have lived and endured through many tragic events throughout their life due to genocide. However, it has inspired him to become a human rights activist. He, like many others, have been affected by the harmful ways of genocide in which it has inspired him to make a difference in the world. He has seen and been through mass killings, starvation, and many more that traumatized him (Machajewski 6). The cruel world that Wiesel had seen and been through during the Holocaust has inspired him to educate people’s minds about genocide and its harm on society through his works of literature and activism.

In the face of oppression and injustice, silence is the voice of the cowards. In Elie Wiesel’s acceptance speech, he asserts that in discrimination, neutrality is as atrocious as the oppressors. Wiesel makes a call to action, conveying that people should speak up when met with other’s oppression. I am for Elie Wiesel’s call to action, because silence is a ripple and humankind depends on it. To begin with, silence is a ripple during oppression.

He draws attention to the cruelties inflicted on other people when a person betrays their humanity. Standing by and watching people suffer is just as damaging as inflicting the suffering. The audience feels guilty for the times they may have been bystanders and became less than human. Wiesel emphasizes that other people are affected by indifference through his use of the phrase “Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.” This phrase switches the idea that indifference is something that hurts an individual to something that hurts numerous other people.

Wiesel’s goal is to get more people to stand up to the “bully” and address the problem. Once people rally together and acknowledge the victims, the aggressor can no longer feel superior to the poor group of people.

Indifference need to be gain awareness and be stopped. He develops his claim by narrating the dangers of indifference, and how it affected his life then, describes how wrongful it is to be treated in such a way. Finally Wiesel illustrates examples of how indifference affected the world. Wiesel’s purpose is to inform us about the dangers of indifference in order to bring change about it. He establishes a straightforward tone for the president, ambassadors, politicians, and congressmen.

Wiesel’s use of ethos, pathos, logos, diction, and allusion certainly gives the audience information and emotions he was hoping

In the speech, titled “The Perils of Indifference,” Elie Wiesel showed gratitude to the American people, President Clinton, and Mrs. Hillary Clinton for the help they brought and apprised the audience about the violent consequences and human suffering due to indifference against humanity (Wiesel). This speech was persuasive. It was also effective because it conveyed to the audience the understanding of

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 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

In seeing human beings as less than human beings, individuals were able to treat one another with a lack of dignity and voice. Wiesel 's work reminds us that anytime voice is silenced, dehumanization is the result. This becomes its own end that must be stopped at all

The entire world was so ignorant to such a massacre of horrific events that were right under their noses, so Elie Wiesel persuades and expresses his viewpoint of neutrality to an audience. Wiesel uses the ignorance of the countries during World War II to express the effects of their involvement on the civilians, “And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent when and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation” (Weisel). To persuade the audience, Elie uses facts to make the people become sentimental toward the victims of the Holocaust. Also, when Weisel shares his opinion with the audience, he gains people onto his side because of his authority and good reputation.