Perils of Indifference Rhetorical Analysis

At the end, and the start of a new millennium, or world has witnessed both atrocities and amazing displays of human compassion. In The Perils of Indifference, Elie Wiesel successfully portrays his thoughts by applying anaphora, and the distribution of both ethos and pathos.

Throughout his speech, Wiesel repeats the word indifference quite often. An anaphora is the repetition of the same word or group of words in the beginning of successive clauses. “To be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human inhuman.

Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred.” Expresses the true emotional depth of the Holocaust by creating a mental picture of one who has gone through pain and torture and has no emotion.

By speaking with the appropriate pauses and tone, Wiesel’s audience felt what he was trying to convey. The display of pathos in his speech grasps the reader with the vast emotions and personal descriptions of his torment and others’ demise.

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“You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.”, is the rebel-like feelings the prisoners continuously expressed.

Finally, ethos deals with credibility. Wiesel not only lived during the Holocaust, but he also survived it. He fought alongside many other Jews for their survival. He gives detail on and about his friends and family stationed at the camp with him. Wiesel goes in-depth with the horrid memories he and many others endured.

The Holocaust was like Hell on earth. During this era, millions of Jews died for their beliefs. Wiesel has relived his experience multiple times in his book Night and his speech The Perils of Indifference.

He uses anaphora and both ethos and pathos to successfully convey his thoughts and meanings of the Holocaust.