Rhetorical Analysis Of Attending The German Conference

effectively discusses the reasoning behind her refusal to attend a conference held in Germany on “German- Jewish relations.” Ozick addresses her audience, a professor who extended an invitation to the aforementioned conference, in a formal manner, at first politely, with extended gratitude to the good nature of both his and his college’s pure intentions. Ozick effectively communicates her somber refusal to attend the German conference by efficiently utilizing appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos. Ozick opens her argument by vaguely claiming a connection to the German Jewish population by stating herself to be Jewish. She does however, admit herself to be Jewish American, meaning she was not directly impacted by the Nazi political party and
Ozick examines the methods German scholars utilize in depth by appealing to the logic of their circumstances; “…I believe that all this—the conscious memorializing of what happened four and five decades ago to the Jewish citizens of Germany and of Europe—is in the nature of things an insular and parochial German task” (Ozick, 363). She explains how ignorant of a task it is to reconcile with Jews after decisively expunging the vast majority of their population. It’s especially illogical to assume that such conferences can reestablish camaraderie between Germans and Jews when Germany was/is devoid of the Jewish population: “a hand held out in friendship to someone who isn’t there? How can ‘relations’ with Jews be achieved in the absence of Jews” (Ozick,
She explains how irrational and insensitive, almost detestable, it is to assume that her, an American Jewish writer, could stand in the place of a murdered Jewish civilian and “reconcile” with the entirety of Germany. She successfully emphasizes this distasteful idea with the concept of “surrogacy” (Ozick, 364). At this point, Ozick directs her argument in a way that appeals to the reader’s emotional conscious. She focuses more on the lost voices of those who lost their lives in the war, and employs specific diction to allow her audience to fully understand the audacity proposed by such surrogacy—the trading places of a murdered Jew and one still