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Paradox
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
Book 2, Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Johnny's Death:
Dickens was a master of emotion, and he accordingly fits Our Mutual Friend with powerful moments of pathos. Mrs. Boffin, Bella, and John Rokesmith visit Betty Higden’s in Book 2, Chapter 9, where Johnny is wasting away in illness. Though the party eventually brings the ailing boy to the hospital, those efforts come too late. Rokesmith returns to the hospital that night, when Johnny is in his final moments:
With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he stretched his little figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on the sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith’s face with his lips, said:
‘A kiss for the boofer lady.’
Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, and arranged his affairs in this world, Johnny, thus speaking, left it.
The death of any young child is emotional on its own—Johnny leaves the world in poverty and sickness. But this account may be even more so through its restraint. Dickens’s critics have frequently charged him with sentimentally manipulating his audience in children’s death scenes, but this instance is notably quiet. Johnny’s death is memorable in its understatement, hardly noticeable here if not for its brief clause: “Johnny, thus speaking, left it.” Dickens no longer interjects with cries on behalf of the dying child, or lodges impassioned appeals to heaven or justice; he simply recounts how Johnny “arranged his affairs in this world.” The scene’s muted, earnest simplicity makes Johnny’s death all the more devastating.
In a novel with multiple deaths, Johnny invites genuine sympathy and pity. He dies in a way that seemingly recalls Jo’s death from Bleak House: poor, feverish, attended only by a male figure. Along with his grandmother’s later death, Johnny provides one of the only “innocent,” pitiable deaths in the novel. Headstone and Riderhood drown, but neither earn much sympathy from the reader. Mr. Harmon’s death looms large in the novel’s background, though it is associated with stinginess and strife. The dying infant gives readers of Our Mutual Friend something to mourn for.
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