Hope, Despair and Memory: Rhetoric

    Hope, Despair and Memory: Rhetoric

      Pathos

      Wiesel is speaking from the heart here.

      By baring his soul in this speech, he's trying to appeal to his audience's hearts with his call for peace. Weary of global suffering, he's calling out for it to stop and he's hoping you're just as sick of it as he is. Lines like this are really meant to tug at the heart-strings:

      And of the little girl who, hugging her grandmother, whispered: "Don't be afraid, don't be sorry to die... I'm not." She was seven, that little girl who went to her death without fear, without regret. (16, 3)

      That sentence alone is enough to make us run out and grab a thousand packs of tissues (and a thousand pints of ice cream).

      We're meant to be stunned by the sheer weight of what he and others have seen, because that's ultimately his message: these memories are supposed to stir something in us, they're supposed to make us feel.

      If they don't, they're robbed of their meaning.