Elie Wiesel's The Perils Of Indifference

The Emotional Effect of Elie Wiesel’s, The Perils of Indifference In Elie Wiesel’s heart-wrenching speech, the Perils of Indifference, he uses various rhetorical appeals to explain his point to the audience. He shares his personal experience of the Holocaust and what happened to those around him to show that indifference, albeit comfortable, is the reason the jews suffered so much for so long. Political officials, acquaintances, and any of the others who bore witness to his speech were able to empathize and understand Wiesel through his use of ethos, pathos, and logos. The Perils of Indifference tells of Wiesel’s experience in the concentration camps and his experience being freed from one. Wiesel shows thanks to the American army as they were the ones who freed him and then goes into his main point: indifference brings more suffering to those who suffer and shows the inhumanity of those who are indifferent. He tells of many instances and

In doing this he shows he has credibility behind his words. Wiesel, “As a young jewish boy . . . woke up . . . in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald” (paragraph 1). Telling the audience of when he woke up in Buchenwald, which was a concentration camp, he uses his time in the camps to support his claims throughout his speech, proving to his audience that he has reliability. Beside ethos, Wiesel tugs on the heartstrings of the audience by using pathos. Wiesel tells of, “The ‘Muselmanner,” . . . wrapped in their torn blankets . . . staring vacantly into space” (paragraph 6). Describing these people saying that, “They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst . . . they were dead and did not know it” (paragraph 6). Using such harsh imagery and descriptive detail when giving Wiesel's speech elicits strong emotional responses from the audience, making the audience empathetic to Wiesel’s purpose for his