“ Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world,” - Barack Obama In this class, we have learned about many things that have happened in the world like the Holocaust and the Bystander effect with short stories, or a book. We have learned things that are happening or has happened already in society, many of which connect with empathy. Empathy can make a more just society because people will be more united but when empathy is not in society, there will be consequences like death. The three assignments that demonstrate the essential question are the Kitty Genovese article reflection, Night Theme Table, and Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance speech. First, the Kitty Genovese Article Reflection answers the essential question that empathy can create a stronger, more just society because if Kitty Genovese´s community had at least a little empathy, she would have never died and their society would be more united and they would have saved a person’s life. The Kitty Genovese story is about how a young woman was walking home after work, late at night, and she was stabbed to death while her neighbors just watched and listened to her cries for help. In the article reflection, I had to write about why her neighbors did not …show more content…
Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech included him talking about how he could not believe that the Holocaust had happened and the whole world just turned their backs. In the speech, Elie Wiesel states,¨ ‘And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent,’¨. Elie Wiesel is saying how the world knew about the Holocaust, but they just remained silent and did not say anything that could help stop it. This relates back to the thesis because no one had empathy and they just allowed this horrible thing to
Wiesel pinpoints the indifference of humans as the real enemy, causing further suffering and lost to those already in peril. Wiesel commenced the speech with an interesting attention getter: a story about a young Jewish from a small town that was at the end of war liberated from Nazi rule by American soldiers. This young boy was in fact himself. The first-hand experience of cruelty gave him credibility in discussing the dangers of indifference; he was a victim himself.
The Central Idea of the Holocaust In the speech, “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech,” Elie shares his messages of never forgetting what happened during the Holocaust and standing up against anti-semitism. The central idea of Elie speech relates to other accounts or testimonies by sharing the same message. There are instances of this central idea in Elie’s book Night, Behind Every Name videos, and Lily Eberts social media article. The book Night by Elie Wiesel, shares the central idea of never forgetting what happened during the Holocaust and standing up against anti-semitism.
Jewish people were being put through many extreme things, they were being overworked, staved, and killed every second of the day. In the novel it states, “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burnt but the world kept silent” (Wiesel, Night 32). The whole world was conscious about the Holocaust and everything that was happening to the innocent Jewish people. They were constantly living in agony but the world did not care. They chose to be indifferent because it did not affect them directly.
My thought of Elie Wiesel talking about compassion is, since he was in the Holocaust some like Miep and Mr. Kraler showed compassion to the Franks and Van Daans by giving them a place to to hide and food to eat so they can survive. Elie Wiesel must of shown a lot of compassion to people and that might be one of the reasons why he survived Auschwitz he must have shown compassion to some or most and he might have been shown compassion by those people. When I first saw Elie Wiesel I saw that he had a good soul. He didn’t look like he would do anything bad to anyone. I could image him as that person who’s always there for you, he shows compassion.
In Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay titled “On Compassion” Ascher considers the concept of compassion by utilizing her own encounters with the homeless as a vehicle to make her argument. In her argument, she interprets compassion as an abstract concept, and portrays empathy as a building block to compassion; making the argument that to be a more tolerant society one must first learn empathy in order to demonstrate true compassion. When analyzing Ascher’s rhetoric, her style, diction and rhetorical devices reveal a skeptical tone and serve a greater purpose in appealing to the reader’s sense of ethos and pathos. Namely, Ascher’s use of first-person narrative and word choice like “we” appeals to the reader’s sense of ethos, which eventually builds
Frederick Buechner once said, “Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin.” Similarly, an author by the name of Barbara Lazear Ascher wrote an essay called “On Compassion,” in which she states that people learn about compassion when they experience hardships and begin to put oneself in another’s place. Along with the idea of compassion being learned, Ascher also tries to make us wonder what our motive is that leads us to being compassionate. Ascher tries to make us question why we feel the need to be compassionate towards others throughout her essay.
Elie Wiesel Rhetorical Speech Analysis Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and winner of a Nobel peace prize, stood up on April 12, 1999 at the White House to give his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”. In Wiesel’s speech he was addressing to the nation, the audience only consisted of President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, congress, and other officials. The speech he gave was an eye-opener to the world in his perspective. Wiesel uses a variety of rhetorical strategies and devices to bring lots of emotion and to educate the indifference people have towards the holocaust. “You fight it.
Empathy; the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. An admirable trait, it often coincides with one's resilience. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his experiences as a young man during the Holocaust. It is a journey of suffering and survival, where the true devastation of the Holocaust is brought to light. Elies great empathy for his father shaped his resilience which allowed him to survive.
Elie Wiesel voiced his emotions and thoughts of the horrors done to Jewish people during World War II whilst developing his claim. Wiesel “remember[s] his bewilderment,” “his astonishment,” and “his anguish” when he saw they were dropped into the ghetto to become slaves and to be slaughtered. He repeats the words “I remember” because he and the world, especially those who suffered in the ghettos and camps, would never be able to forget how innocent suffered. Consequently, he emphasized that “no one” has the right to advocate for the dead. Like many other people in the world, he lost his family during the war.
In his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel strives to inform his audience of the unbelievable atrocities of the Holocaust in order to prevent them from ever again responding to inhumanity and injustice with silence and neutrality. The structure or organization of Wiesel’s speech, his skillful use of the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos, combined with powerful rhetorical devices leads his audience to understand that they must never choose silence when they witness injustice. To do so supports the oppressors. Wiesel’s speech is tightly organized and moves the ideas forward effectively. Wiesel begins with humility, stating that he does not have the right to speak for the dead, introducing the framework of his words.
Empathy -- to step outside of one’s emotions and submerge within another’s. To the chagrin of the global community, there is a prominent deficit of that inherent attribute. Arguably, a growing population has fallen as victims to passive, unconscious emotions and fail to see the importance of radiating empathy within their everyday lives. Yet through the sea of indifference lies literature that teaches the significance of empathy, one being Harper Lee’s unforgettable novel: To Kill a Mockingbird.
In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.
The decision not to act can have terrible consequences, and the jewish people experienced this first hand. This is why Elie Wiesel feels it is so important for people to bear witness to their surroundings. Once an event such as The Holocaust happened, nothing could change it. This shows the Moment Elie realized that “‘Bite your lips, little brother… Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later.
They had no idea that all of this was going to happen, because life was good and they were living it. Wiesel’s personality, faith with God, and relationships changed as a result of the Holocaust. Throughout the text, Wiesel’s personality changed a lot. In the beginning, he said that he was a “deeply observant” person (Wiesel 3).
During the unjust times of the holocaust, thousands of Jews were being tortured and killed as the world stayed silent. In Elie Wiesel’s “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance” speech, Wiesel shares the horrendous and unjust times of the holocaust and the impact on how nobody decided to speak up. As a quiet survivor of the labor camps Wiesel had first hand experience on the silence all the Jews encountered during the unjust times of the holocaust. Through the use of the rhetorical appeals ethos and pathos, supported by the figurative techniques of anaphora and motif, Wiesel persuades the audience to use their voices against any form of injustice. Through the use of ethos, supported by the figurative technique of anaphora, Wiesel persuades the audience