Joseph Newell Essay 1-31-23 Mrs. Gray Keep Memory Alive and The American Idea In order to persuade a reader, many authors write essays in a particular way that appeal to the reader’s emotions or to create emphasis on a certain topic. They may use different rhetorical strategies such as parallelism, repetition, slogans, and/or rhetorical questions to make their point. In order to explain this further, Elie Wiesel and Theodore H. White’s stories will be compared and contrasted based on their use of rhetorical devices. The speech “Keep Memory Alive” was delivered by Elie Wiesel to a group of people whom he wanted not to remain silent in the face of injustice. First of all, Wiesel used repetition to get a very important point across to the audience. For example, he repeated the words “I remember”. He wanted people as well as himself to remember the victims of the holocaust. Another rhetorical strategy used by Wiesel was parallelism. One example in his speech of parallelism is “And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget.”. Wiesel used parallelism to always remember and never forget the holocaust by keeping the memory alive and reminding those who may forget. …show more content…
“The American Idea” which was written by Theodore H. White is a story that emphasizes freedom. In the same way as Wiesel, this author used repetition as a rhetorical strategy. For instance, White used repetition in which certain words were repeated. The phrase “the call” was used multiple times throughout “The American Idea.” The call represents freedom. However, one rhetorical technique that is different from Wiesel is the use of a slogan. White used “that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. White wanted to emphasize how important freedom is to a