The Three-Ring Speech

Elie Wiesel, in this speech, follows a pretty simple format that you all should try at home. It works great in both speeches and essays, and it goes a little something like this:

He opens with an anecdote, an interesting story to break the ice. In the story, he's already priming you to understand the basic core messages of his speech.

Next, he delves into the meat of the speech. He sets up his thesis statement, so to speak (the part about how memory's important to ending injustice; you know the part), and then goes back into narrating—only this time, his personal stories are helping to directly shape the flow of his reasoning.

Finally, he ends the speech with a call to action. After considering everything he's said, you might be curious what he wants us to do with that information. So, like any good speaker, he wraps it up by telling you what the ultimate point was, and what you should take away from his speech.

How it Breaks Down

Besht in Show

Wiesel opens with a story from Hasidic tradition, doing some great work at setting up his core talking points (i.e., hope, despair, and memory) within a Jewish cultural context.

Pro tip: starting off any speech with a good story is always a great move.

Remembering the Holocaust

Wiesel takes us on a tour of his and others' experience with the Nazi death camps to set up both his peoples' desperate need to remember and their desperate need to forget what happened to them. He does a great job weaving between his anecdotes and his concepts.

On Deaf Ears

This is Wiesel's big call to action, the grand finale of the piece, where he moves from the past to the present day. In a post-Holocaust world, one would think the kinds of global crises that ran rampant during the '80s would be impossible. By really remembering the kinds of horrors and suffering that are out there, he hopes that those memories will move people to ensure those sorts of things will never happen again.