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Definition of Pathos
Pathos, along with logos and ethos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Pathos is an argument that appeals to... read full definition
Pathos, along with logos and ethos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Pathos is... read full definition
Pathos, along with logos and ethos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective... read full definition
Letter 9
Explanation and Analysis—The Living Spectre:
At the end of Letter 9, after a letter spent exploring colonial Charles Town, South Carolina and explaining the institution of chattel slavery in the Southern colonies, James is confronted with the horrors of slavery firsthand. He comes across an enslaved man trapped in a cage in the forest, left to die as punishment for killing the overseer at the plantation where the man had worked. To capture the full power of this scene, de Crèvecoeur laces his language with personification, hyperbole, and pathos:
The living spectre, though deprived of his eyes, could still distinctly hear, and in his uncouth dialect begged me to give him some water to allay his thirst. Humanity herself would have recoiled back with horror; she would have balanced whether to lessen such reliefless distress or mercifully with one blow to end this dreadful scene of agonizing torture!
First, to appeal to the reader's sympathy, de Crèvecoeur personifies the whole of humanity as an individual woman: faced with a scene this horrific, even Humanity, the arbiter of mercy, would have wondered whether to end the man's life and relieve him of this agony. This awful deliberation and the description of the man as a phantom-like "living spectre" are both examples of hyperbole that de Crèvecoeur uses to further stoke the emotional appeal (pathos) of the scene. As such, the passage reads as an explicit plea with the reader to stand against the practice of slavery.
Related Themes:
