ipl-logo

Rhetorical Analysis Of The Perils Of Indifference By Elie Wiesel

455 Words2 Pages

Caring is Important “Gratitude is a word that I cherish” (Wiesel). Elie Wiesel was from a small Jewish town. When he was young, he was taken to a concentration camp. After a couple of years, he was freed, but he still has no joy in his heart, he was being careless enough to get himself in danger. Elie Wiesel shows rhetorical questions, imagery, and parallelism in his speech to show the dangers of indifference.
Firstly, in “The Perils of Indifference”, Elie Wiesel uses rhetorical questions to get us thinking on the thought of what life would be like for people after the Holocaust. “Does it mean that we have learned from the past?” “Has the human being become less indifferent and more human?” “Have we really learned from our experiences?” (Wiesel). The questions are about the impacts of the Holocaust. No one cared about what was going on around them, if they did care none of this would’ve happened. Wiesel is trying to get the reader's attention that if everyone cared enough about humanity, then they would’ve known how to act when they saw horrible injuries and people dying. …show more content…

Wiesel uses imagery to expose the reader to the unsettled mood there is. “Behind the black gate of Auschwitz.” “Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space.” “And that ship, which was already on the shores of the united states, was sent back.” (Wiesel). The use of imagery impacts the way the audience reacts to what happened in the Holocaust. Wiesel is trying to get the readers to visual of the setting almost as if they were in prison. Some of them were careless enough that they didn’t know who they were or where they were at. Some were terrified. All the terrified Jews were sent back to concentration camps and later

Show More
Related
548 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
670 Words | 3 Pages

American Jewish writer, and political activist Elie Wiesel, in his sympathetic speech “The Perils of Indifference” to send a strong message to the audience. As a survivor of the Holocaust, he supports his claim through his speech explaining the dangers of indifference from first hand experience. Specifically in his speech he refers to himself, “A young Jewish boy [..] woke up in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald”(par 1).. In addition, Wiesel use of rhetorical questions is for the audience to question or to think about indifference. Wiesel’s purpose is to warn people about indifference in order to “save” our future.

Read More
899 Words | 4 Pages

Elie Weisel created this speech in order to inform others about the dangers of indifference, and how it can begin to affect almost every single community. In this speech, Wiesel explains to his audience that the main reason the holocaust occurred was because of indifference, and explains to his audience that it’s “...so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair” (Wiesel) This creates the challenge of acts of anger, discrimination and hatred onto the Jewish community, and how it impacted the holocaust’s experience for the Jewish prisoners, and how indifference is still happening today to many minorities.

Read More
438 Words | 2 Pages

Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, is a moving and powerful account of the Holocaust. The book provides a first-hand account of the horrors of the concentration camps and the impact they had on the author’s life. In order to convey the emotional impact of his experiences, Wiesel uses imagery to evoke pathos, the appeal to emotion, causing the readers to feel sad but also hopeful. A way that Wiesel uses pathos in Night in order to create a sense of dread and sadness for his audience is by using vivid imagery of the horrible crimes he witnessed. “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children.

Read More
1340 Words | 6 Pages

In this portion of the book it is easy to imagine the nooses around the necks of the men and boy. Because readers can so clearly see the devastating scene, they will have a hard time forgetting about the brutal, unfortunate actions that took place during the Holocaust. Another time Elie Wiesel uses imagery is while the people of his neighborhood are being taken away to the concentration camps. People had left their houses along with their least important

Read More
861 Words | 4 Pages

Holocaust survivor and author of the novel, Night, Elie Wiesel in his speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” claims that indifference is not only a sin, but is an act of dehumanization. He begins to develop his claim by defining the word indifference, then enlightens the audience about his personal experiences living through the war, and finally asks the audience how they will change as they enter a new millennium. Wiesel’s purpose throughout his speech is to convince his audience not to be indifferent to those who were and are being treated cruelly and unjustly. He creates tones of guardedness , disappointment, abandonment, and hopefulness in order for his audience to see his perspective during the horrific times of the war.

Read More
737 Words | 3 Pages

He emphasizes the weakness of civilization by drawing a contrast between the peaceful existence before the conflict and the terrifying reality of the Holocaust. When he says ‘All those doctors of law or medicine or theology, all those lovers of art and poetry of Bach and Goethe, who coldly deliberately ordered the massacres and participated in them, what did their metamorphisis signify? The references to important persons from the culture who were involved in the crimes highlights the serious moral and ethical breakdowns that can occur in any community. Wiesel highlights the need for alertness and the thoughtful cultivation of memory to save the future by highlighting these

Read More
350 Words | 2 Pages

“Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw” (Wiesel). In the Holocaust six million Jews were killed. They were brought to the concentration camps in cattle cars. At Auschwitz one-point-six million people died. Elie Wiesel’s “The Perils of Indifference” uses ethos, pathos, and rhetorical questions in order to persuade people that the opposite of love is indifference and not hate.

Read More
848 Words | 4 Pages

Elie wiesel once said, “ A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness”. Elie Wiesel is a holocaust survivor. He gave a wonderful speech called “ The perils of indifference”. He delivered this speech at the white house in washington D.C hoping to encourage the audience to learn from the past. Elie wiesel builds an argument to persuade the people of the new generation that we can all learn and grow to be better in the new millennium.

Read More
674 Words | 3 Pages

By using rhetorical questions Wiesel subtly convinces the audience to care more about how their indifference will affect the upcoming generations. Elie Wiesel also uses repetition right through his speech. He repeats the word “indifference” meaning the lack of interest, concern, or sympathy. He tells his audience that he knows indifference is the easiest option but that indifference leads to suffering in all forms. Through repetition, he persuades his audience that indifference is the reason for many tragedies from the Holocaust to assassinations.

Read More
963 Words | 4 Pages

Famous author and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel claims in his speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” that indifference is dangerous. He supports his claim by first defining indifference as “a blurred line between light and dark,” then by illustrating how indifference can benefit the aggressor and be a friend to the enemy. Finally, Wiesel’s imagery and diction helps support his claim. For example, by listing all of humanity’s failures he helps us imagine how dangerous indifference can really be. Wiesel’s purpose is to illustrate all of the dangers of indifference by using personal and historical experiences in order to prevent the same failures from happening again.

Read More
448 Words | 2 Pages

Wiesel does this to immerse the reader in the agony of the time period. Martin Luther King Jr. employs imagery to convey his message to the audience, focusing on landscape and time. He wants to let his audience know that “now is the time to rise from the dark” in order to “deloate the valley of segregation.” King uses it in this manner so that the audience can visualize a valley to represent a low point that they were experiencing

Read More
982 Words | 4 Pages

This indifference was exposed in the aftermath of the war, but it also shed a light on other instances in which people have been indifferent, and when they themselves have been prejudiced. This matter is pointed out in Elie Wiesel’s speech “The Perils of Indifference,” which he gave on April 12, 1999. Wiesel listed many events in the 20th century, some that took place after the Holocaust, that could show how often the world was indifferent to the sufferings of others. He mentions that there have been, “two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations -- Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin -- bloodbaths in Cambodia and Nigeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in

Read More
609 Words | 3 Pages

When Wiesel makes it clear that he has suffered personal loss, he is evoking an emotional response from his audience. By stating that he senses their presence “The presence of my parents, that of my little sister.” the audience empathizes with him and the horror of the Holocaust is made more clear for them. They cannot only understand his feelings; they can connect to them which strengthens their understanding of the need to act whenever they witness inhumanity.

Read More
1129 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More

More about Rhetorical Analysis Of The Perils Of Indifference By Elie Wiesel

Related Topics

Open Document