In ” Keep Memory Alive” and “The American Idea” both use rhetorical appeals to create the speech. Both speeches were great and both had a great impact on the world. They should be remembered and acknowledged more. In Elie Wiesel’s “Keep Memory Alive” speech he is trying to encourage the audience that they should forever remember what happened to the people in the Holocaust. He was not happy about the fact that the world was silent and that they knew and did nothing about it.
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.
Elie Wiesel Rhetorical Speech Analysis Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and winner of a Nobel peace prize, stood up on April 12, 1999 at the White House to give his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”. In Wiesel’s speech he was addressing to the nation, the audience only consisted of President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, congress, and other officials. The speech he gave was an eye-opener to the world in his perspective. Wiesel uses a variety of rhetorical strategies and devices to bring lots of emotion and to educate the indifference people have towards the holocaust. “You fight it.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president during the Second World War, and had great accomplishments during the war he got soldiers: “to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler” (5). In this quote Wiesel emphasizes what Roosevelt fought against. However, “his image in Jewish history is flawed,” because of one incident that happened sixty years ago, “ its human cargo –nearly 1,000 Jews—was turned back…I don't understand” (5). Wiesel changes his tone during these quotes he is calm, but disappointed. Many people in the audience haven't heard of that side of the story before, only what is in the U.S. History text
Author Bio Elie Wiesel, born September 30, 1928, is married to Marion Wiesel, who he has one son with. Elie Wiesel is a professor at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts, he’s also taught at the City University of New York, and was a visiting scholar at Yale. Elie Wiesel is the Advisory Board chairman of the newspaper Algemeiner Journal. Elie Wiesel wrote Night based on his personal experience as a holocaust survivor. Elie Wiesel has received a Nobel Peace Prize, a Congressional Gold Medal, a Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by George H. W. Bush, and many more awards.
Elie is a young boy who lived with his family. Elie and his dad work for the Germans at the concentration camp stay alive, and they try to survive the holocaust by keep working for them. Elie Wiesel effective core quality throughout the book is that he was really scared and confidence. Elie core quality change by thing that happened, In front of him, his quality became more confident about himself because is normal for him. For example, when his father gets beat by of the German guard, he didn 't even blink about what happened.
Wiesel wanted to make us feel sad and trust him by using pathos in the speech. At the beginning of the speech, he states, “Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.” In this part of his talk, he tells the people that no one can ever make up for the loss of so many people in the concentration camps.
At first Elie did not want to talk about the Holocaust, what he experiences because he just wanted to forget everything but he could’t. Elie Wiesel slowly realizes that you can’t forget such traumatizing memory so easily and you can’t not talk about it either. People have to learn to hear the things that happened, he wanted himself to be herd so individuals understand that experiencing something like the Holocaust is not traumatizing. Through his book Night, Elie Wiesel opened a foundation for humanity to combat indifference, injustice and intolerance. Rosenblatt’s article explains how Wiesel taught individuals that “silence speaks to us as words, humanity is what you do in response to anguish and that suffering has meaning if it helps you take one step forward, from the darkness of grief to the light of hope”.
The speaker uses his experiences in the concentration camp and the location of his speech to increase his credibility. He speaks directly to the president, “I stand before you, Mr. President” (310) to ensure the audience of the importance of the topic at hand. The president and White House are associated with importance; if the president is involved it must be important. Since Elie Wiesel is speaking in front of the president at the White House, the speaker and his subject must be important. Wiesel separates his younger self from his current self to deflect sympathy from the audience.
Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in the city called Sighet in Transylvania, which is presently a part of Romania. He had three sisters, two older and one younger, and a father and mother. His two older sisters are Hilda and Beatrice, and his younger is Tzipora. Elie and his family were very religious jews. Their life was busy with their jewish studies and owning a shop that provides for their needs.
In the speech Elie says “ There is so much to be done. One person a Raoul Wallenberg and Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King. Jr.” He said that because he wanted to show people how one person were, any race can make a huge difference by standing up. He also says “ What all theses victims need above is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their freedom depends on ours the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.”
The entire world was so ignorant to such a massacre of horrific events that were right under their noses, so Elie Wiesel persuades and expresses his viewpoint of neutrality to an audience. Wiesel uses the ignorance of the countries during World War II to express the effects of their involvement on the civilians, “And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent when and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation” (Weisel). To persuade the audience, Elie uses facts to make the people become sentimental toward the victims of the Holocaust. Also, when Weisel shares his opinion with the audience, he gains people onto his side because of his authority and good reputation.
"Bite your lips, little brother…Don 't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now… Wait. Clench your teeth and w a i t … " page:53 Night.
In his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel strives to inform his audience of the unbelievable atrocities of the Holocaust in order to prevent them from ever again responding to inhumanity and injustice with silence and neutrality. The structure or organization of Wiesel’s speech, his skillful use of the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos, combined with powerful rhetorical devices leads his audience to understand that they must never choose silence when they witness injustice. To do so supports the oppressors. Wiesel’s speech is tightly organized and moves the ideas forward effectively. Wiesel begins with humility, stating that he does not have the right to speak for the dead, introducing the framework of his words.
I believe the audience was in shock with that excpert from Wiesel's speech. That was probably the first time the audience had heard that a thousand Jews were on American shores and were turned back into Nazi hands. I believe that the government conceals innumerable incidents from us, the people of the United States. The quote from Wiesel was impactful to the speech. It made the audience think about what else the government hides from
