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  • Essay / Elie Wiesel's Use of Rhetoric in The Perils of Indifference

    Introduction: Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and professor at Boston University, spoke on the series of Millennium Readings at the White House on April 12, 1999. The speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” was delivered by Elie Wiesel. Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, addresses the issues of the 20th century while explaining the dangers of indifference. Wiesel's appeals, powerful messages, and arguments to his audience make this speech so effective. Wiesel lived through the difficult times of the Holocaust and experienced indifference firsthand. Indifference is the absence of compassion and implies something worse than hatred. Context: He wanted to convey that indifference was worse than hatred or anger. Throughout his speech, he uses the compelling elements ethos, pathos, and logos to communicate to his audience that empathy makes us human. Elie Wiesel successfully portrays his theories on the dangers of ignorance, adding anaphora and broadcasting ethos, pathos and logos. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essay “Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains awakened, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. Elie Wiesel shows his philosophy very well throughout the speech. He started talking about a little story about a young Jewish child and the interesting thing was that he never specifically mentioned that the young child he was talking about was himself. Wiesel has been the Andrew Mellon University Professor of Humanities at Boston University since 1976. In 1986, he won numerous awards and honors; the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was also the founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial. More than 40 of Wiesel's books have been published, including Night, an autobiography about his experiences in the Holocaust. Even if the audience at the Millennium conference were unaware of Wiesel's tragic story after hearing his lecture on his artistic philosophy, they would understand it. Evidence and Quote: Wiesel shows pathos very well throughout the speech. Indifference is the greatest tragedy of our modern age. It's everywhere. The indifferent are cruel and impassive with their indifference to the pain of others so varied. For example, ignorance, fear, benefit, authority and domination. People's indifference to the suffering, torture and murder of others continues to be a subject of human tragedy. This is the inhumanity of humanity. Wiesel is guilty of indifference towards the pain of his neighbor. “So much violence; so much indifference.” Wiesel used logos when evoking history in his speech. When he was in the concentration camps, he talked about what happened. He also highlighted the lack of support people have when things are happening now. It's like we don't matter. They stand there and watch all the bad things. “And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew.” The purpose of Wiesel's speech is to convince the audience of victims of injustice and cruelty not to become indifferent. The speaker hopes to show compassion to those suffering from injustices around the world in the 21st century. He argues that being indifferent to this suffering is what makes a human being inhuman. After all, indifference is more dangerous than anger and hatred. “Rooted in our tradition, some of..