Example Of Pathos In Night By Elie Wiesel

The story and speeches of Ellie Wiesel are a statement to anyone who turns a blind eye to things and the result of doing so. The story as well as the speeches help argue why people shouldn’t be bystanders. In the story, the rhetorical strategy of pathos is used to invoke a certain feeling in the reader such as misery, hopelessness, and defeat.
To begin with, the author used the pathos strategy of the feeling of losing someone to further his argument, in this case why individuals should not be ignorant. The book exemplifies this by sharing how people were taunted by the loss of family members. An example of this is seen when a woman named Mrs. Schachter lost half of her family and the way in which she coped with it. The original text shares,

He explains that it is not right for him to accept a great honor piece on behalf of everyone that was lost during the Holocaust. Elie also claims how, “No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.” (“Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech.”) We can utilize this information to make the conclusion that even the living are also left with the guilt of surviving when devastating events take place. This is pertinent because it shows us, yet again the way the author incorporates pathos into his

The speech contains many sentences where the speaker, Elie Wiesel, doesn’t have hope for the future and questions what life would be like if people continued to continue being bystanders. In the speech, he shares, “ We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms.” (“The Perils of Indifference”) Reading this helps us realize how pathos is used as a result of the argument to be a witness that does something about tragedies and not a bystander. This is important because it helps strengthen the original message that the speaker is trying to get across to the