rehugo #2 speech

Ruby Mann

Mr. Soeth

English 3 AP

February 2, 2011

REHUGO Analysis: History - Speech

A. On April 12, 1999, Elie Wiesel delivers his speech: “The Perils of Indifference”.

B. The speech was given to President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, members of the congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, and friends. The speech was given in regards to honoring the fifty-fourth anniversary of the end of World War II. From 1942-1945, the Wiesel family was first sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and then to the concentration camp in Buchenwald. After the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel and two of his sister were among the few survivors.

C. “The Perils of Indifference” speech is first started by Wiesel saying “a young Jewish boy”. He is referring to himself and that is how he catches the audiences’ attention. In the speech, Elie talks about gratitude and how important it is to him. He says “gratitude is what defines the humanity of a human being.” Throughout the speech Elie talks about humanity and being inhuman. Weasel questions the United States and Franklin D. Roosevelt for not helping the Jews that were in danger and how come the Pentagon did not do any action to assist the Jews, even though they had full information of what was happening. He questions President Roosevelt’s actions for sending the St. Louis, which was carrying nearly one thousand Jews, back to Germany even though the ship had reached United States shores. Wiesel asks “Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims”? Elie Wiesel brings up a recent topic s like “the defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland”, and NATO and the United States helped the Kosovo victims. Wiesel questions the society and asks if the society has changed since it does not stay silent anymore and the world does respond. Elie Wiesel comes back into a full circle and ends his speech with “the young Jewish boy”.

D. Rhetorical strategies:

Definition: Wiesel uses definition to describe the words that he uses in his speech. By doing so he adds emphasis to the speech. In the beginning of the speech, Wiesel defines the word indifference as “no difference” a strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil”. Throughout the speech he talks about indifference and how unfair it was that not actions were taken.

Allusion: Elie Wiesel mentions World War l and World Was ll, the genocide, and Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedys, Sadat, and Rabin being assassinated. He uses these examples to show the conflicts that have happened around the world in history, and how the society does not stay quiet anymore if a disturbance occurs.



MLA citation:

Wiesel, Elie. “The Perils of Indifference”. Millennium Lecture Series. White House, Washington D.C,. United States of America. Delivered 12 April 1999.