Neutrality Helps The Tormented By Elie Wiesel Essay

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Elie Wiesel Writing Assignment Elie Wiesel delivered a speech on December 10, 1986; this was an acceptance speech for an honorable prize, the Nobel Prize. In his speech there is one quote that typically gets noticed rather instantaneously. This quote is: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” This statement may seem like it has only one part that it relates to, but there are many others that appear within the speech when looking at word choice and rhetorical devices. Overall, Elie Wiesel’s speech makes the statement as a way to tell people not to stay silent and instead to take action. Elie Wiesel’s speech correlates to other parts of the passage with the help of a few different devices these are, rhetorical questions, word choice, asyndetons, and text structure. There are many locations within his speech where Mr. Elie Wiesel’s most famous line of his Nobel Prize speech relates to others and expands on the thought of taking action. In paragraph ten the following quote is written: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” This quote is close to a rhetorical question, which is: “‘Can this be true? … Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?’” The rhetorical question …show more content…

Mr. Wiesel’s speech had a singular quote that stands out to many and it is: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” This statement relates to many parts of the speech with the help of his word choice and use of rhetorical devices. His speech was based on people not staying silent in situations where they should speak out and help people who can’t do it for themselves. Elie Wiesel’s speech has helped many people be able to help the victims and tormented people by helping them not stay quiet, and instead take

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