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Rhetorical Analysis Of Hope Despair And Memory By Elie Wiesel

1097 Words5 Pages

Elie Wiesel, in his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Essay, "Hope, Despair, and Memory," writes very powerfully on memory and the Holocaust. Being a Holocaust survivor himself, Wiesel took his place at the podium to say that remembrance is not just of atonement but also a way of assuring the future. Through this, he uses rhetorical strategies such as rhetorical questions, metaphor, and emotional appeal to others to powerfully put forth his view of memory as a saving grace for failures to forget or repeat historical atrocities. Among the most potent rhetorical strategies that Wiesel uses in the speech are rhetorical questions. Used at the very beginning, they attract attention and somehow invoke people's thinking about the themes they are talking about. …show more content…

He often employs metaphors to lend meaning to the abstract and usually elusive aspect of memory. Maybe the most remarkable metaphor of his speech is to refer to the Holocaust as "the kingdom of night." With these words, the intense darkness and despair of the Holocaust experience were couched. He describes this as a kingdom; thus, Wiesel underlines that this period is more like a realm that is heavily populated and underscored by a regime of cruelty and inhumanity. This is a powerful enough metaphor to make the audience realize entirely the emotional and psychological burden of the Holocaust, and the need for remembrance becomes evident. Wiesel also uses metaphors to define the role of memory. He refers to memory as a shield, stating that "memory is our shield against the return of evil." This metaphor supposes memory to be a protective power, saving humanity from a return of hostility in some future reality. It's just that if society were to maintain the memory of the horrors of the Holocaust, it would build a defense against the possibility of new horrors. Therefore, the metaphor is powerful in that it takes the memory of an abstract thing and puts it into some concrete shape and activeness in which acts of remembrance are not passive but, in a sense, active—the memory is indispensable for the survival of human dignity and

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