Robert Niemoller’s poem, “First They Came…”, and Elie Wiesel’s speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, both deal with the fact that indifference has many consequences. However, there are some clear differences between the two. While each work uses literary devices to portray its message, they use different devices to portray different messages. Niemoller uses anaphora, pauses, and mesodiplosis to convey a regretful, hopeless tone, and Wiesel uses parallelism, rhetorical questions, and juxtaposition to convey a more hopeful tone. Niemoller’s poem “First They Came…” has a regretful tone, and uses various devices to convey a message that if a person is indifferent, it will hurt them in the end. Throughout the poem, Niemoller repeats the phrase, “Because I was not”. This use of anaphora is useful in conveying Niemoller’s message because it shows the reasoning behind Niemoller’s apathy, but does not justify it, showing that he is regretful of his choices. In addition, Niemoller uses pauses to let the impact of his statements sink in. Every time he says, “I did not speak out,” a hyphen follows it, indicating a pause. This gives the reader time to think about how Niemoller didn’t speak out when he knew he should have. It also makes the reader feel like the speaker is taking a pause, as if to reflect on his actions. Finally, Niemoller uses mesodiplosis to show that everyone is the same. The phrase, “they came” is repeated in every stanza, and is the only phrase that is that way. This
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.
Stylistic Technique Essay In the book “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, the author uses stylistic techniques such as imagery and diction to achieve a particular purpose. In pages 61-65 Wiesel’s purpose was to show how he changes since the day he was deported. When he was deported to the concentration camps, he was scared and showed sympathy to the people dying and suffering. He witnesses babies getting tossed into pits of flames and his father getting slapped, and in both situations there was nothing he could do.
The last line of the stanza, and poem, repeats the same structure of the previous stanzas’ last lines, it is shorter the other lines of the lines in the stanza and it finishes the sentence started in the second line. The last line of the poem brings in another element, water “by unwilling waters”. (155). Water is the opposite of the other fire, but not necessarily the opposite of destruction, the theme throughout the
The general statement made by Elie Wiesel in his speech, The Perils of Indifference, is that indifference is sinful. More specifically, Wiesel argues that awareness needs to be brought that indifference is dangerous. He writes “Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end”. In this speech, Wiesel is suggesting that indifference is dangerous it can bring the end to many lives. In conclusion Wiesel's belief is suggesting that indifference is an end, it needs to be noticed and taken care of.
In 1986, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Elie Wiesel for his book Night, a memoir of his experience during the Holocaust. His acceptance speech was intended to ensure that the events of the Holocaust were not echoed in the future; that no human being would be subjected to the same torment that he was. Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her fight for the right to education of children and all young people. In her acceptance speech, Yousafzai shows great knowledge about the subject, and through touching stories and comments on her assassination attempt by the Taliban, she reaches out to people from all over the world. Through the use of rhetorical appeals and techniques, both authors manage to get their messages across.
Elie Wiesel Rhetorical Speech Analysis Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and winner of a Nobel peace prize, stood up on April 12, 1999 at the White House to give his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”. In Wiesel’s speech he was addressing to the nation, the audience only consisted of President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, congress, and other officials. The speech he gave was an eye-opener to the world in his perspective. Wiesel uses a variety of rhetorical strategies and devices to bring lots of emotion and to educate the indifference people have towards the holocaust. “You fight it.
To develop the theme of denial and its consequences, Wiesel uses juxtaposition and characterization. Wiesel uses juxtaposition to develop the theme of indifference and its consequences. Near the beginning of the memoir, Elie’s family is packing for their deportation to Aushwitz. There is absolute chaos, as Wiesel writes, “Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty ground” (15). Unlike the disorder, however, Elie, on the same page, writes, “All this under a magnificent blue sky.”
That nigh the soup tasted of corpses”. Elie Wiesel used to be a vivacious person- always seeking God’s presence- but from the commence of this genocide he has been negatively impacted. God used to be his everything; his strength and his mellifluous song that comforted his very soul. However, all that he is dependent on now is bread and water-
It becomes clear that Elie Wiesel`s commentary on human nature is that, during extreme circumstances, people are selfish and would achieve anything for their own survival. Furthermore, In Wiesel’s novel people strived to survive this injustice. For example, the Holocaust caused countless amount of
Paradox, parallelism, personification, repetition, rhetorical question, pathos. You may ask yourself: what importance do these words have? These words are rhetorical devices used to develop a claim. A person who used these important devices was Elie Wiesel. In his 1986 Nobel Peace Acceptance Speech, Elie Wiesel develops the claim that remaining silent on human sufferings makes us just as guilty as those who inflicted the suffering and remain guilty for not keeping the memory of those humans alive.
In his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel strives to inform his audience of the unbelievable atrocities of the Holocaust in order to prevent them from ever again responding to inhumanity and injustice with silence and neutrality. The structure or organization of Wiesel’s speech, his skillful use of the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos, combined with powerful rhetorical devices leads his audience to understand that they must never choose silence when they witness injustice. To do so supports the oppressors. Wiesel’s speech is tightly organized and moves the ideas forward effectively. Wiesel begins with humility, stating that he does not have the right to speak for the dead, introducing the framework of his words.
In chapter one of Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, his purpose behind his use of excessive tragic irony is to display the astonishing amount of innocence and unawareness the Jews have about the Germans’ plans. For instance, Wiesel displays the Jews’ ignorance when he writes, ““There was joy, yes joy. People must have thought there could be no greater torment in God’s hell than that of being stranded here, on the sidewalk” (16). This exemplifies how the Jews truly believe that the situation was going to get better. This is tragically ironic because their situation was not going to get better, it was going to get much worse.
Wiesel uses a variety of metaphors to display the suffering and pain that he and his family, along with many others, endured. Using metaphors makes it easier for people who did not live through something to imagine
Holocaust. Death. Suffering. These are but a few of the words that may begin to describe this tragic period in the history of man. The Perils of Indifference and Night are both publications by the Elie Wiesel, one of the many victims to the Holocaust, but one of the very few victims who lived to tell his story.
However, after reading the first stanza, it is evident to the reader that, there is oppression in the air. The first stanza reads that, “Dawn in New York has four columns of mire and a hurricane of black pigeons splashing in the putrid waters,” and this is clear to the reader that, the New York Dawn is not a normal dawn and that life in New York is despondent. According to the writer, the dawn does not come with something to smile about. After reading the poem, we realize the writer’s reason for entitling it as such.