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Precipice Of A New Century By Elie Wiesel

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Haley Gudeman Mr. Holschuh AP Language and Composition 21 March 2023 Precipice of a New Century Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist gave his speech The Perils of Indifference to President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and members of Congress on April 12, 1999. The world is on the precipice of a new century, and Wiesel shares his thoughts on the future and the past. Elie Wiesel is not only an activist, but he is also an author and survivor of the Holocaust. He has personally experienced the effects of indifference and has seen how it affects the lives of millions of people. In his speech, he reflects on the horrors that have occurred this past century, pondered the prevalence of indifference, emphasizes the effect …show more content…

Using juxtaposition, Elie Wiesel reflects on the horrors that have occurred this past century and their effects on people. He tells a story about a young Jewish boy who was just freed from the Buchenwald concentration camp and was “finally free, but there was no joy in his heart.” This boy has just been released from imprisonment but has experienced such horrors that he is not able to enjoy his freedom. This shows the true effect of his imprisonment and torture, and how this experience will haunt him for the rest of his life. He may grow up, but this experience will never leave him. This shows the true effect of his imprisonment and how this experience will never leave him; he may grow up but he can never leave this experience behind. The young boy was not the only person who had these horrible experiences. Millions of other Jews experienced this pain, and many of them never got to experience freedom again. The boy, as well as many others have experienced such tragedies that they have lost hope for the future. The audience can feel the pain and hopelessness that this young boy felt after experiencing persecution and torture. …show more content…

He uses the idea that humans can be inhuman to emphasize the pain and suffering that people can inflict. He says “to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.” He highlights that humans can be extremely cruel to other humans solely through their indifference. When one ignores the suffering around them, they lose some of their humanity. Wiesel also presents this idea by saying “in denying their humanity, we betray our own.” 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. Not only is the indifferent person sinning, but they are also punishing other people through their indifference. The audience starts to notice their guilt and sin and how they punished others for their

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Jonathan Dixon Mrs. Turner English II Honors 18/4/23 Title: Subtitle “Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction” (Wiesel). The Holocaust was a dark period in time, categorized by the discriminate genocide of many marginalized groups, most notably Jewish people. During this time, many chose to ignore the persecution of innocent people, deciding to instead turn a blind eye to the injustice happening with their knowledge. In “The Perils of Indifference”, Elie Wiesel uses pathos, rhetorical questions, and loaded words to emphasize the dangers of being blind to the suffering of others, using his own experience as a catalyst to do so.

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In Weiesel's own life, he faced indifference head-on when he was in the Nazi concentration camp. For example, when Wiesel was in the camp he felt “abandoned by humanity” Wiesel (8) because everyone turned the other cheek and left the Jews out to dry. With no help until the American troops got to them. Another example that Wiesel noted in his speech is that indifference is “always the friend of the enemy”. This means that the perpetrator always wins in the world of indifference because the person or people that are being put down and mistreated don't have the strength and power to help themselves get help or be free.

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The first reason his speech explains how indifference is the worst emotion is by explaining how indifference affects people. This quote️️️, “Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.” , helps you understand what happens when one, or many people act with indifference. Another reason that Elie Wiesel’s speech promotes his idea that indifference is detrimental is the way he notifies us about what we as humans can do to do the right thing by not acting with indifference.

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Furthermore, the author wants us to know that when someone is indifference to the suffering of someone else, he or she is just as guilty as the other person. Wiesel's purpose is to inform us that everyone is different but not everyone is indifferent in order to create awareness of the danger. He establishes a thoughtful tone for readers by using stylistic devices such as repetition , imagery and syntactic

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As a 16 year old, I would say that I go through a lot in my day-to-day life. Waking up early everyday for school, staying in school for 7 hours, studying, and eating meals that I would argue are sometimes not the very best. If I had to imagine my 16 year old self getting stripped away from my home, being separated from my family, and to live in absolutely unlivable conditions, I wouldn’t be writing this essay right now. These conditions, however, are the exact conditions that the then-teenager Elie Wiesel and many countless others have gone through during the Holocaust. Wiesel accounts his personal experience through writing a memoir, Night, in it his experiences written with much symbolism.

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“In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred.” In a way, indifference is the greatest danger one may come across. The thoughts of helplessness and feeling exiled is enough to drive a normal person completely off the rails. So Wiesel's statement is first hand proof yet again that indifference is more than just someone not providing the care you need: it's enough to make someone completely give up on life and lose all hope they may have

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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.

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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

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The human condition is a very malleable idea that is constantly changing due to the current state of mankind. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the concept of the human condition is displayed in the worst sense of the concept, during the Holocaust of WWII. During this time, multiple groups of people, most notably European Jews, were persecuted against and sent to horrible hard labor and killing centers such as Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiesel uses complex figurative language such as similes and metaphors to display the theme that a person’s state as a human, both at a physical and emotional level, can be altered to extreme lengths, and even taken away from them, under the most extreme conditions.

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This is an effective way to persuade someone and to make them listen; but Wiesel not only rationalize to his audience logically, he also approached them emotionally, which in return, made his assertions stronger. It may seem that Wiesel acknowledges the reasons why they were being indifferent, but his audience would feel otherwise. His tone with the hint of sarcasm implies that he only concede to that idea to show his point indirectly that indifference is bad and makes the victims like him meaningless and insignificant and small to his audience. It also introduced the fact that it makes the indifferent people just as bad as the oppressors. His claim that a “person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence… Indifference reduces the Others to an abstraction” is supported by his example of the situation of the Muselmanner (2).

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In the book Night, written by Elie Wiesel, one of the main characters Elie Wiesel was taken from his home in 1944, and was sent to Auschwitz, a concentration camp, at the age of fifteen. When Elie was separated from his family it caused me to think the most. The part in the book that provoked the strongest feelings in me was learning that babies were being burned. The book Night also helped me to have a better appreciation towards the Jews and what they had to live through. Through Elie’s words throughout Night, the separation from his family had the most effect on me, learning about babies being burned provoked the strongest feelings within me, and Night helped me to really appreciate the struggles endured by the Jew’s.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Elie Wiesel emphasizes throughout "The Perils of Indifference" how choosing to ignore the suffering of others only produces more misery, more prejudice, and more grief—and it also imperils the very humanity of those who choose to do so. Wiesel also noted that in the

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