What is Pathos?
Pathos is a literary technique used to evoke pity or sadness in a reader/audience. Writers and directors use this technique to appeal to their readers'/viewers' past experiences and/or knowledge of that emotion. It is a persuasive device used to manipulate audience emotions to engage them with character and/or context.
Example
(from Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
“He had meant the best in the world, and been treated like a dog—like a very dog. She would be sorry someday—maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY!”
“He had meant the best in the world, and been treated like a dog—like a very dog. She would be sorry someday—maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY!”
Explanation
Sawyer uses Tom's thoughts to arouse feelings of pity in readers’ minds by telling how the girl, whom he loved, treated him like an animal despite his honest feelings for her. He wishes he had died and then she would feel sorry for him. In this way, Sawyer gently persuades the audience to feel pity towards the character of Tom. The use of the repeated simile emphasises how badly Tom has been treated and the alliteration with words 'she', 'sorry' and 'someday' brings attention to the perpetrator of his pain.
Activity
Read through this section of text from John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and write a short explanation of how pathos is evoked in this paragraph.
That day he sat down with a pen and paper and told her how unhappy he was there and how much he wished he was back home in Berlin. He told her about the house and the garden and the bench with the plaque on it and the tall fence and the wooden telegraph poles and the barbed-wire bales and the hard ground beyond them and the huts and the small buildings and the smoke stacks and the soldiers, but mostly he told her about the people living there and their striped pyjamas and cloth caps, and then he told her how much he missed her and he signed off his letter 'your loving grandson, Bruno'.
Use
This literary device can be used in creative writing, advertising, speech writing or just about any kind of writing that requires an element of persuasion. As a writer, you would consider using the device when you wanted to create a response of pity, sympathy and/or sorrow. You would do this by adding repeated lists of words that evoke emotions of sadness or by contrasting positive and negative ideas (where your protagonist is having to deal with the negative aspects).