Rhetorical Analysis: The Perils Of Indifference

The Perils of Indifference Rhetorical Analysis Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, gave a speech called The Perils of Indifference, to elected officials including the president and the first lady on April 12th, 1999. He claims that being a victim of indifference hurts, but it hurts even more when others don’t help. The author writes in a personable tone to connect with the audience during his speech. Wiesel supports his claim by utilizing many rhetorical devices, including tone, rhetorical questions, and repetition. Wiesel defines the definition in depth, calls attention to the fact that indifference is more prevalent than acknowledged, engages often with the audience throughout his speech in a personal matter, illustrates the positive and
Wiesel does this by using antithesis. Wiesel talks about extreme situations that people notice, and then states indifference is is a case of blurry lines. He lists many short phrases in one sentence, “...light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil”. The value of Wiesel explaining indifference using antithesis exposes that most people don’t pay attention to the things in between two extreme cases. Using antithesis is a superb way to shed light on the fact that people usually know of obvious situations. Indifference isn’t obvious, so antithesis is the perfect device to highlight that. For example, in war, people are either going to ask stories about the heroes, or stories about the injured. They aren’t going to want to know what the photographer or truck driver did. The same thing goes for indifference. Those stuck in between the two extremes suffer because people neglect those who are in the blur. Wiesel is not saying that all negative events have a blur, but indifference causes the blur. As a survivor, Elie personally experienced the neglect indifference causes, therefore it was appropriate to use antithesis. The rest of his family was separated from him, leaving them to die and him to live. In addition, Wiesel also uses a cumulative sentence to enhance his argument that indifference is more prevalent than realized. He shares multiple examples of tragic events that “have cast a dark shadow over humanity”. He talks about the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Ghandi along with inhumane events like Hiroshima and Auschwitz. He does this all in one sentence to overwhelm the readers with many different situations when indifference has occurred. He wants to nail his point that indifference is very prevalent by listing so many events