Wiesel Allusions

By listing a series of allusions, Wiesel was referencing the meaning behind the words. Wiesel’s list becomes a functional rhetorical tool because it stimulates the audience’s mind to form associations between his allusions and his topic of indifference. Without the list of allusions, Wiesel would not have had the same effect on his audience, since it created a lasting impression on the audience through the series of historical events about indifference. Wiesel had no need to elaborate on his allusions because he wanted his audience to think and remember by themselves the indifferences listed and reflect on how over time nothing has changed.

As Foucault writes in the Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison: “But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technological intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect

By having the last two paragraphs laden with questions, Wiesel suggests that society needs a wakeup call to the indifference surrounding everyone. Reinforcing his argument about indifference, Wiesel offers the rhetorical questions as a final food for thought about the indifference that surrounds society, which no one does anything to change. Wiesel, through the series of questioning, engaged identity formations in the audience's thoughts of whether to take action or ignore the problem at hand, forging a lasting impact on his audience’s future