Rhetorical Analysis: The Perils Of Indifference

Helping the enemy

People only care about themselves! It is not their problem if six million people of a group are murdered, right? Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the holocaust, the systematic murder of over six million Jews, wrote a speech about the dangers of indifference. Indifference is not caring and according to Elie Wiesel, it is the opposite of love and worse than hate. In “The Perils of Indifference” by Elie Wiesel, he uses his experiences, logic and points made from rhetorical questions to persuade his audience about how one should act when they see injustice.

"Fifty-four years ago, to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up...in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald.” (Wiesel). Wiesel uses his experiences to show he was a victim of the holocaust as well as a victim of indifference shown when he said, “And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the state Department knew.” (Wiesel). This persuades his audience to act on injustice because the audience has, more than likely, never went through experiences he went through, so how can they disagree on his opinion of injustice and indifference? It also shows that people do not care about injustice and

have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two world wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations (Gandhi, the Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin) bloodbaths... the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima.” (Wiesel). This logic persuades his audience because obviously, these things are not good. They are all victims of indifference; nobody did anything about them. Additionally, the same effect is given when he says, “Indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor.” (Wiesel). He reveals that when you do not act, you are acting and helping the enemy get away with what it is