“The Perils of Indifference” is a speech that Elie Wiesel delivered in Washington D.C. on April 12, 1999, exactly 54 years after his release from the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald by American troops. Both Congress along with President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton were present to hear the speech. Wiesel spoke briefly about what it was like in the concentration camps, but he focused mostly on the topic of Indifference. His speech was effective in its use of rhetoric to convince the audience that as individuals and as a world culture we cannot afford to become indifferent to the suffering around us. Wiesel begins his speech by retelling of his liberation from Buchenwald. This is the most important use of the appeal to credibility. Wiesel is …show more content…
He uses the appeal to authority by showing that he lived through great suffering in World War Two as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp where he suffered greatly and experienced the indifference shown by the world first-hand. He then used the appeal to facts by first defining the word “indifference,” and then stating the facts of several events that took place showing the lack of immediate concern that was shown by the United States towards the prisoners when the United States discovered what the Nazis were doing. Wiesel also uses the appeal to emotion while he laces his entire speech with many different emotionally charged words. He tries to elicit a strong emotional response from the audience so as to move them towards action against indifference. His goal can still be achieved today if each person who reads his speech was to actively see the suffering that others experience and work ease it to the best of their ability. This would result in a more unified community, nation, and world culture where those suffering would no longer feel alone and unimportant but instead they would be acknowledged and
In his address to Ronald Reagan, Elie Wiesel attempts to convince the president not to visit the Bitburg cemetery. Weisel is well aware of President Reagan’s situation, and thus, he crafts his speech around rhetorical techniques, namely concession refutation, repetition, and the appeals.
Elie Wiesel shows great respect for America. He complements the soldiers, the first lady and the president. He informs us about how young he was and felt anger and rage towards the Nazis. He also notices the soldiers that saved him had great rage which translates to true compassion for one another. He gives us a great history lesson and who was indifferent especially towards how towns were miles away from the camps and did nothing about it. He impounded the heart breaking on how doing business with them until 1942 and we knew what was going on. He questions the indifference we had.
He experiences numerous people being hanged, beaten, and tortured daily which changes the amount of faith and trust that he has in Humanity and God. He sees faithful and courageous people crumble in front of his own eyes before their lives are stolen. Towards the end of the book, Wiesel is in the hospital at the camp for surgery on his leg and the man in the bed next to him says something that is bitterly true, “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people,” (Wiesel 81). Wiesel doesn’t argue with this, which shows that he had lost his faith in humanity, and doesn’t know who to trust. Wiesel is also naive and vulnerable at the beginning of the book. He refuses to touch the food at the ghetto and strongly considers rebelling against the officers at the Concentration camps. At the same time, he is also a strong and fairly well-fed boy who does not grow tired easily. He is shocked that the world is letting these barbarities occur in modern times. Over time, he grows accustomed to the beatings and animal-like treatment that is routine at the camps. “I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked….. Had I changed that much so fast?”
Many people have given speeches like his, but the significance of this lecture was the passion he showed and still felt for this Earth, and its people, after all the horrible events that had happened to him in his life. He tells anyone who will listen to his speech to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Wiesel vocalizes that being a bystander and allowing bad things to happen is just as bad, in his mind, as being the person who actually does those bad things. Elie Wiesel says, “In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.” Through his speech he tries to get anyone that is willing to listen to stop just accepting that the world is evil. He tells them to try and change it. The audience in the room he was speaking to never stood up and applauded. Instead, the audience gave Wiesel their undivided attention, never saying a
Along with rhetorical appeals, Wiesel also uses many rhetorical devices such as parallelism and anaphora. Wiesel depicts parallelism when he says, “to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler” (Wiesel lines 103-104). The parallelism and anaphora, in the quote, provide emphasis on the discrimination and abuse that has taken place around the world. Repeating the same initial phrase shows the significance of the words Wiesel is speaking. Wiesel mentions the victims of this extreme tragedy when he states,” for the children in the world, for the homeless for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society.” (Wiesel lines 17-19). This use of anaphora and parallelism emphasize the amount of people the Holocaust has affected and impacted. The parallelism being used adds value to his opinions and balances the list of people Wiesel is making in his speech.
From being a bystander of bullying to committing murder are many ways of being indifferent. It is everywhere in everyday life in prospering countries and in poor and destroyed countries. Elie Wiesel knows how indifference feels and how it affects people. He was also indifferent and regrets what he did to this day. He was a victim of the Holocaust and lived through indifference. During his imprison ship he saw indifference everywhere in the camps. How he treated his father is what he regrets. He just cared about himself because another prisoner told him to. He believes his father died because he did not help him all he could. His whole book could be based on indifference if you interpreted it that way. From how the guards treated the prisoners to how kids including Elie treated their own parents. Indifference is a very big topic and a part of Night. Indifference is what pushed him to write his descriptive, emotional, strong, and outstanding novel.
Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish people’s outlook on life. Wiesel’s identity transformed dramatically throughout the narrative. “How old he had grown the night before! His body was completely twisted, shriveled up into itself. His eyes were petrified, his lips withered, decayed.
In the eyes of Elie Wiesel, author of Night, indifference whether it be in relationship abuse or another problem, is mentally damaging and needs to be eliminated. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel illustrates how indifference can harm the mind of the victim when he says, “Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live,” (Night 34). In this, Wiesel is speaking of his first night in Auschwitz. When he mentions silence he is referring to the indifference that the Jews in concentration camps faced from the rest of the world. Wiesel refers to that night as the time he lost his desire to live because he saw so much indifference toward the suffering of the inmates and the horrific things that were happening to them. After this, his desire to stay alive was destroyed because he watched as the world stood by, indifferent to the senseless murder of millions. Throught this, Wiesel illustrates that indifference will impact people for the rest of their lives. Because indifference
Wiesel states that in many instances while in the camp, the only thing keeping him going is his father. Wiesel is never truly alone. Even after he loses his faith, his father proves to...
In his book Night Mr. Elie Wiesel shares his experiences about the camps and how cruel all of the Jews were treated in that period. In fact, he describes how he was beaten and neglected by the SS officers in countless occasions. There are very few instances where decent humans are tossed into certain conditions where they are treated unfairly, and cruel. Mr. Wiesel was a victim of the situation many times while he was in the camps. Yet he did not act out, becoming a brute himself, while others were constantly being transformed into brutes themselves. Mr. Wiesel was beaten so dreadfully horrible, however, for his safety, he decided to not do anything about it. There were many more positions where Mr. Wiesel was abused, malnourished, and easily could have abandoned his father but did not.
In “The Perils of Indifference” Elie Wiesel uses several techniques to get his point across. Three of them in the speech are Ethos, Repetition, and Pathos. He uses a combination of the three elements throughout the paragraphs of his speech to attract the readers. The combination of these elements help draw the reader’s emotions and interest towards his subject. He focuses on word choice that would pertain to his audience’s level of vocabulary.
In April, 1945, Elie Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp after struggling with hunger, beatings, losing his entire family, and narrowly escaping death himself. He at first remained silent about his experiences, because it was too hard to relive them. However, eventually he spoke up, knowing it was his duty not to let the world forget the tragedies resulting from their silence. He wrote Night, a memoir of his and his family’s experience, and began using his freedom to spread the word about what had happened and hopefully prevent it from happening again. In 1999, he was invited to speak at the Millennium Lectures, in front of the president, first lady, and other important governmental figures,. In his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, he uses rhetoric devices to get emotional responses and to connect with the audience. He wants to create awareness of the dangers of indifference and show how there needs to be change. His speech eloquently calls out the government for their lack of response during the Holocaust, and warns against continued disregard for the struggles of others. He sees indifference as being the ally of the enemy, and without compassion there is no hope for the
Do you think that indifference is evil? This is the controversy that Elie Wiesel has brought to the world's eyes. Indifference is evil because it can cause harm not only to others, but to them themselves.
The events experienced in Auschwitz by Wiesel would influence him to write about this moment. Though Wiesel had difficulty expressing the trial that he experienced, he discovered that formatting the event into ...
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.