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Analysis Of Elie Wiesel's Speech: The Pathos Behind Indifference

809 Words4 Pages

Uriah Witt
Professor Michael Jernigan
English 102
20 FEB 2018
The Pathos Behind Indifference

An elderly man makes his way to a podium of the White House, in attendance is President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham-Clinton. He had prepared a speech that will tug at the heart strings of every person in attendance, along with everyone watching from home. The date is significant to Elie Wiesel’s speech, 12 April 1999, 45 years to the day he had been liberated by American Soldiers from Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany. With sadness in his eyes and heart he delivered his speech The Perils of Indifference. Elie Wiesel spoke to the audience’s heart using pathos, using proper tone and with appropriate pauses allowing for the …show more content…

Wiesel almost immediately draws the audience in with the compelling beginning of a horrible nightmare, he uses joy and gratitude it is difficult to understand why until you see the emotional side. As the speech goes on he breaks down the word indifference to make sure the audience understands what he is speaking about, also incase there was any misconceptions of this word he says, “What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no difference." 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). He understood that for the audience to get emotionally attached to your speech, emotions must flow like a river. Wiesel continually brought up gratitude, joy, compassion and the children. The use of Pathos in this speech was evident throughout, the audience was in his shoes and felt his …show more content…

He wanted to the pauses to be placed during the parts of great impact and meaningfulness to himself. When he first says “indifference” (Wiesel) he speaks loudly and pauses for a short time after he says, “no difference” (Wiesel). This pause allows everyone in attendance to ponder and reflect on Wiesel’s definition of indifference. By doing this Wiesel prepared listeners for the entirety of his speech. Wiesel repeats gratitude, letting the audience know the importance of this word to himself, after the third time he will take another small pause to encourage the audience to create their own definition of gratitude. Dramatic pauses can be powerful Wiesel uses these pauses again while emphasizing “indifference” (Wiesel)and, “inhumane” (Wiesel). He spoke the words “In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.” (Wiesel) He allows the attendees to make an overall connection between indifference and inhuman. These pauses allowed him to convey his overall

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Utilization of the repetition of questions allows Wiesel to make the audience ultimately feel as if they are in control of deciding what they think is morally correct. Within almost every paragraph, Wiesel asks his listeners rhetorical questions which truly have one compassionate answer. By using the questions, Wiesel manages to assist the listener in choosing his side without simply telling them what the right answer is. For example, when Wiesel asks if “the human being [has] become less indifferent and more human,” he implies that indifference in unconditionally inhumane. The question of “what will the legacy of this vanishing century be?” fills the audience with the duty of making the end of the century and the upcoming century the most

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When Wiesel conveys indifference in this way, he does so from the experience

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Wiesel begins to shift away from a pathos tactic, he introduces ethos by painting an image of what it felt like to be trapped, cut off from the world “inside ghettoes and death camps” (wiesel, 1999). Brilliantly, he further establishes his credibility and right to address his audience – President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, America, and the world alike in the manner he does by informing his attendees of the only shred of hope he shared with so many others. That hope being they believed “Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world . . . had no knowledge of the war against the Jews” (Wiesel, 1999). That statement alone offers the foundation on which Mr. Wiesel is able to objectively speak of President Roosevelt in a manner that otherwise could be mistaken as bitter.

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