The Perils of Indifference
Elie Wiesel was one of many who gave voice to the Holocaust, to it's victims and it's survivors. In “The Perils of Indifference”, Elie makes you question why the world hasn't changed since the Holocaust. After witnessing the chaos and horror that the Holocaust brought people should want to end that suffering, yet still today there are civil wars, genocides, and disputes that could leave lasting effects much like the holocaust. Being a survivor of the Holocaust himself, Elie used the emotions of the crowd to get his point across. he suffered alongside thousands of others, and because of this suffering he Has the authority to question why nothing has changed. In his speech, Elie relied mainly on the effect his words would have on the government officials he was addressing, as a part of the Millennial Lecture series, to make his point heard. And it was heard. Elie’s message was clear and effective; standing back and watching is worst the committing the act yourself. The reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust should leave the impression that we can't just sit back and let it happen again.
Pathos was the main rhetorical device that Elie used. From the very beginning he was painting the picture of a young boy who “was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart” (Wiesel). He wanted the audience to understand their pain, to sympathise with them. He uses his words to instill guilt and empathy into the audience. Elie speaks to allow the audience to understand how it felt to feel abandoned then finally be free but still feel trapped. “They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it”(Wiesel). Even his father “suppressed his pain, never speaking of what he had endured and dodging questions when pressed by friends or strangers. This silence was his way of healing and building a new life” (Freedman). Wiesel uses his experiences, what he and other survivors went through, to have the audience understand. He uses the guilt to illicit a response to help understand that indifference isn't the proper response. He uses the raw emotion of a survivor of the holocaust who understands indifference to impact the audience. The horrors of the holocaust left everyone in shambles, “Viewing the camp atrocities and being exposed to the full extent of Nazi barbarism was a watershed experience for many American soldiers (Ast). By recounting how the United States soldiers felt when they entered the concentration camps, the audience understood why doing something was much better than being indifferent. If the would have went in when they first found out about hitler's tyranny, they could have prohibited the mass chaos that followed. Elies language and emotion helps to prove the point that indifference is the worst punishment endured by the suffering.
Wiesel also uses a bit of ethos and logos, but not in the same capacity he used pathos. With him being a survivor himself he had so much emotion invested and he could speak from his own experiences to establish his credibility. He “felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate… that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him”(Wiesel). He was there. Elie suffered at the hands of the holocaust. He understood how it felt to be hopeless, he felt abandoned by those who thought indifference was easier than empathy. He worked to appeal to the reasoning of the audience. He questioned himself and them. He left them searching for answers to questions he was unsure of himself. “What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means ‘no difference’ A strange and unnatural state in which lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn , crime and punishment , cruelty and compassion, good and evil”(Wiesel). The audience was left trying to decipher the meaning of indifference and why they, and so many others, stood behind it. He supports his claim about indifference with the fact that since the holocaust so many acts have been turned a blind eye. Instead of acting to solve the civil wars and the genocides, they are ignored by the people who can potentially help the most.
“The Perils of Indifference” has one main purpose. To make people realize that indifference doesn't solve anything. If you sit back and let something happen it will continue to happen until you do something about it. Even today “these failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations… bloodbaths in Cambodia and Algeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima”(Wiesel). Our past has been tainted with the effects of indifference, and if we don't change so will our future. Afterall, “indifference is not a beginning; it is an end”(Wiesel).
Works Cited
Wiesel, Elie. “The Perils of Indifference.” Millennial Lecture Series.
Freedman, Samuel G. Bearing Witness: the Life and Work of Elie Wiesel. Vol. 133, The
New York Times Company, 1983
Ast, Theresa. Confronting the Holocaust: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration
Camps. Nomenklature Publikations, 2013.
