Asked by hd
Reread Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. Work with your group to analyze the speech, and determine Wiesel’s purposes and point of view. Use the chart to record your ideas. Then, answer the questions that follow.
Author’s Purposes and Point of View
Supporting Evidence
Purpose #1:
Purpose #2:
Point of View:
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Author’s Purposes and Point of View
Supporting Evidence
Purpose #1: Preserve memory and bear witness to the Holocaust so the dead are not forgotten and their suffering can teach future generations.
- Evidence: Wiesel repeatedly frames testimony as a moral duty: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” He stresses his personal pledge: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.” The speech continually returns to memory as the basis for conscience and for preventing repetition of atrocity.
Purpose #2: Condemn indifference and call listeners to moral action — to take sides, speak out, and defend human dignity everywhere.
- Evidence: He explicitly rejects neutrality and silence as complicity: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” He urges active responsibility rather than passive remembrance, making a universal appeal to oppose injustice wherever it occurs.
Point of View:
- Wiesel speaks as a Holocaust survivor and moral witness; his perspective is shaped by personal experience of atrocity and survivor responsibility to speak for the dead and the persecuted. This gives his voice both particular authority (he is a direct witness) and a universal moral claim (he argues that memory and action are obligations for all). Evidence: his frequent first-person statements about a vow to speak, his dedication of the honor to victims, and his repeated commands (“we must…,” “we must always take sides”) show a firsthand, ethically urgent viewpoint that links memory to civic/human responsibility.
If you want, I can expand each purpose with more specific passages from the speech or suggest classroom discussion questions your group can use.
Supporting Evidence
Purpose #1: Preserve memory and bear witness to the Holocaust so the dead are not forgotten and their suffering can teach future generations.
- Evidence: Wiesel repeatedly frames testimony as a moral duty: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” He stresses his personal pledge: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.” The speech continually returns to memory as the basis for conscience and for preventing repetition of atrocity.
Purpose #2: Condemn indifference and call listeners to moral action — to take sides, speak out, and defend human dignity everywhere.
- Evidence: He explicitly rejects neutrality and silence as complicity: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” He urges active responsibility rather than passive remembrance, making a universal appeal to oppose injustice wherever it occurs.
Point of View:
- Wiesel speaks as a Holocaust survivor and moral witness; his perspective is shaped by personal experience of atrocity and survivor responsibility to speak for the dead and the persecuted. This gives his voice both particular authority (he is a direct witness) and a universal moral claim (he argues that memory and action are obligations for all). Evidence: his frequent first-person statements about a vow to speak, his dedication of the honor to victims, and his repeated commands (“we must…,” “we must always take sides”) show a firsthand, ethically urgent viewpoint that links memory to civic/human responsibility.
If you want, I can expand each purpose with more specific passages from the speech or suggest classroom discussion questions your group can use.
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