Pathos is part of the Aristotelian appeals of persuasion. It comes in three parts: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is the writer’s credibility and trustworthiness with their audience. Just as lots of us understand Donald Trump as a businessman who hosted his own (ridiculous) television show, we don’t trust his position as President. Logos is the writer’s sense of logic. Simply, can the audience read and comprehend the piece?
My personal favorite is pathos: the appeal to the audience’s emotions. It’s the writer’s ability to draw feeling out of their audience.
When a TED Talk or Button Poetry piece brings you to tears: pathos. When a Nicholas Sparks novel makes your heart feel full and your eyes at certain times well up with tears: pathos. When the transgender community is not allowed to enter the military and I feel fury and betrayal: pathos.
Though these examples have a more depressive connotation, that is not the limit on the appeals to pathos, just the most common. Nor is Aristotelian appeals limited to written literature, persuasion is seen on all formats: writing, video, music, performing arts, body language.
We use pathos more than we think. Just as simple as asking for a favor because “I’m so tired” or “My feet hurt so bad from work all day”; both examples bring out the idea of pitying who they ask into adhering to the request.
To my fellow writers and imaginative creators of all sorts, pathos shapes the way we sway our audiences. It is the reason some characters we hate, others love, and the most frustrating of all the characters we feel both towards. Our abilities to influence how characters are perceived comes from pathos. Character development from a pathos point of view is what changes the audience's feelings toward a character.
So I’d like to thank the idea of pathos and appeals to it, for persuading most of my life. I always seem to find it, just as I pour my heart out pen in hand, cry at the absolute beauty of Anastasia on Broadway, or seem to be consumed with tears when I took my final bow on the stage I practically lived on.
