Victor Lopez
English II Pre-AP
Rough-Draft
6 December 2010
Indifference
In Elie Wiesel’s speech, The Perils of Indifference, his main focus is to pass the same feeling of indifference that he endured, to the audience; he successfully achieves this task by using different elements as his advantage. His purpose, subject matter, tone of voice and audience are the elements that are utilized in his translation. The overall feeling he addresses is not weak; he concentrates on hitting the audience with an emotion that is so strong that it makes them finally notice what indifference truly means. Elie Wiesel’s main objective is to capture the true sense of indifference pertaining to the lives of the Jews. For example, “It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless.” He tries to entice the audience about the fact that indifference is noticed but never is acted upon. People have noticed indifference in the Jews and don’t understand that noticing it does not assist anyone’s feeling or emotions; it only makes their lives seem insignificant. In the passage, he uses the word “their” as a reference to the Jews, but he is also included and he slowly reiterates that towards the middle of his speech. Elie Wiesel portrays himself as an example of indifference; he does this on purpose to grab the audience’s attention and overall emotion. Towards the middle of his speech, Elie Wiesel stresses that the Jews at the time were innocent and had no way to trigger a response from people around them. Perhaps, he meant that the Jews never saw a proper response from the Germans. Although, he seems to enforce the fact that it causes the Jews to have a forgetful feeling. His whole subject matter revolves around the idea that the Jews never felt appreciated; the only attention they received was negative attention. In a sense, Eli Weisel stresses that him and the people around him were seen as objects rather than human beings. For example, he states, “Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy.” The key word he reiterates is indifference; indifference is always against him and his life, but now he is using it against the audience. Also, Wiesel uses rhetorical devices to transfer emotions, feelings, and words to the audience. The main rhetorical device that he uses is repetition. He used Repetition to catch the reader’s attention by making them focus on a specific idea, thought, or word. The personification was used to give off strong emotion and feeling to the reader, but the difference is the feeling is not given by his own words but more by other’s peoples past actions in history. He also uses personification multiple times, for instance, “their eyes told him.” Like stated before, the Jews revieved no appreciation, but if they did, it was never with word of mouth; these men and women, including Weisel, received emotion from peoples body language. Elie Wiesel addresses his speech towards the current president, Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton represents all of the past