Persuasive Speech In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Romania. Wiesel was very passionate about his Jewish studies, which he pursued, before his family was forced into a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. In 1944, the Wiesel family was sent to the largest concentration death camp, Auschwitz, where Elie and his father were selected as slave laborers. In 1945, Elie is moved to the Buchenwald concentration camp with his father, whom dies there. However, just a few short months later, the camp was liberated by United States troops, freeing Elie and any other survivors. Elie was the only one of his family members who survived. Though Elie endured such a horrendous event, he took his experience in a positive way and made a lifestyle out

His speech can fall under the belief/value category because he refers to virtues and morals throughout the speech. For example, Wiesel says, “What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms.” This statement shows that Elie believes that the century will be judged and it is important to correct the mistakes of the past century, while entering the new one. An example of Elie’s speech under the action/policy category, would be how Wiesel addresses a problem by referring to his Holocaust experience. He then addresses the right thing, in his opinion, that should have been done. Elie states, “If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.” This quote from Wiesel’s speech stresses the importance of taking action against an injustice by referring to his own personal experiences. Elie Wiesel also uses a form of persuasion by comparing and contrasting the good and bad events of a century. For example, he first starts with the bad things, “These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations—Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin”. He then goes on to compare the negative events to positive ones, to provide a sense of motivation for success. Elie states a few examples of America’s accomplishments while speaking, “The defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid….” Elie uses a form of comparing and contrasting to persuade the audience to strive for more accomplishments and less