27 pages • 54 minutes read
Elie WieselThe Perils of Indifference
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Inhumanity of Indifference
Wiesel argues that indifference, in contrast to emotions like anger and hatred, is a kind of void. It produces nothing: “[i]ndifference is not a response” (Paragraph 8), and “indifference is never creative” (Paragraph 9). It is a “strange and unnatural state” that erodes important boundaries, blurring the lines “between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, good and evil” (Paragraph 5). The nature of indifference makes clear that it “is not a beginning; it is an end” (Paragraph 10). To be indifferent is to be dead, in a spiritual sense, and not know it. Indifference marks a loss of one’s humanity.
Though Wiesel acknowledges that indifference “is so much easier” (Paragraph 6) than any alternative, much of his speech focuses on outlining its terrible consequences. These consequences, notably, concern not only the ignored victims but also those practicing indifference. Accordingly, he outlines these consequences on both an individual level and on a societal level. Throughout, his argument relies on pathos, which often manifests in rhetorical questions—the use of these unanswered (and arguably unanswerable) questions emphasizes the nature of indifference. As the questions build, the absence of answers suggests the absence of compassion.
On an individual level, practicing indifference is to abandon one’s humanity. To an indifferent person, “his or her neighbors are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless” (Paragraph 6). But “in denying their humanity, we betray our own” (Paragraph 10). To practice indifference is thus “not only a sin, it is a punishment” (Paragraph 11); the indifferent individual, Wiesel suggests, suffers spiritually as much as their ignored neighbor suffers physically. On a societal level, indifference enables large-scale human suffering. Wiesel cites, among many examples, the decision of the United States to turn away the St. Louis, sending nearly 1,000 Jews back to Nazi Germany, as well as the broader Nazi persecution of the Jews. Beyond the immediate loss of human life, the consequences of societal indifference manifest in The Relevance of the Past: the past is always with us, and the judgement of the future is looming, too.
The Relevance of the Past
Wiesel, as a Holocaust survivor, addresses the Holocaust as both a global tragedy and a personal one. The speech’s treatment of the past varies. Sometimes the past is monumental, an entire millennium of events on which to reflect and pass judgement. At other times, the past is a child, a sort of companion at once part of and separate from Wiesel. Regardless, though, the past is of great relevance to the present, as remembrance is key to combatting indifference.
The speech pushes the audience to consider their place in history, with Wiesel taking care to acknowledge the past and the need for reflection on it. He thanks Mrs. Clinton for acknowledging “that we are now in the Days of Remembrance” (Paragraph 13); this annual event, established in 1978 by the United States Congress, is an eight-day period for national efforts at commemorating and educating the public about the Holocaust. He observes the significance of the year, as he gives the speech in April of 1999: “We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium” (Paragraph 4). And he notes that the date of his speech, April 12, marks two overlapping 54th anniversaries: Wiesel’s first day of freedom after his liberation by American troops from Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp, and the day that Franklin Delano Roosevelt died.
Wiesel’s emphasis on past events incorporates a keen awareness that time is forever moving forward. The past is never far from the present, in part because the present will soon become the past. The judgement of the future is never far away. At this turning point into the new millennium, Wiesel suggests that the 1900s “will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms” (Paragraph 4). Though his questions concern the past century—"What will the legacy of this vanishing century be?” (Paragraph 4)—the implied question asks what legacy we will strive to create in the upcoming century.
In turn, remembering and reflecting on the past is key to achieving a legacy in the new century that may be judged more worthy. The Inhumanity of Indifference stems from forgetting. Indifference “benefits the aggressor—never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten” (Paragraph 10). Wiesel equates feeling forgotten with being abandoned: “but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten” (Paragraph 13). The victims of the present century, in short, saw their horrors compounded by the sense that the world had forgotten them. Consciously remembering the past, Wiesel argues, is part of how people in the present can fend off the temptation of indifference.
The Interconnectedness of Humanity
Wiesel builds his speech on an assumption of the interconnectedness of humanity. He notes that in Nazi Germany, he felt society could break down into “three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders” (Paragraph 13). In this speech, he seems most concerned with those inclined to be bystanders. To ignore the pain of others, however, to give no response to their suffering, is to deny their humanity—and “in denying their humanity, we betray our own” (Paragraph 10).
The theme of the interconnectedness of humanity is interwoven with the theme of The Inhumanity of Indifference, as indifference is a practice that cuts humans off from one another. When one’s fellow humans are in pain, “to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman” (Paragraph 9). Simultaneously, Wiesel argues that part of being human is feeling gratitude: “[g]ratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being” (Paragraph 3). Gratitude is a recognition of shared humanity and interconnectedness, whereas indifference is a denial of humanity and interconnectedness. To be human is to interact with humanity. To be human entails, when necessary, being “involved in another person's pain and despair” (Paragraph 6). That involvement invites action on behalf of victims and, in turn, elicits the corresponding emotion of gratitude, completing the circle of interconnection.
Wiesel argues that suffering is compounded by being forgotten, further emphasizing the importance of humans feeling integrated into humanity at large. The pain of the victim “is magnified when he or she feels forgotten” (Paragraph 10). At the same time, to ignore their pain is to forget: “not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory” (Paragraph 10). The theme of The Relevance of the Past is thus interwoven with the interconnectedness of humanity, too, as the act of remembering is part of solidifying human connection.
Related Titles
By Elie Wiesel
