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Appeal to Pathos Thread #4
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Michaela
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Jan 05, 2016 02:26PM
How does the author appeal to pathos throughout the book? Be specific and analyze please!
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For one example, the author appeals to pathos when she speaks about her pets. When she was very young, about five, she watched her father toss her beloved cat out the window by the scruff. Not only did this incident cause the reader to feel a sense of sadness, it relates again to when she spoke of how she felt when her dad got mad. She felt like he could do the same to her and this again makes the reader feel upset and bad for the author.
Another example of Pathos can be seen during their Christmas in Phoenix. Jeannette's mom tells them that this Christmas will be the best one yet, and that they'll even celebrate it on Christmas Day and not a week after. They get a tree and decorate it and buy gifts or each other instead of making them, something they haven't done before. Just as the reader starts to think something good will happen to Jeannette and her family, her dad gets in the way. He drinks before breakfast starts and is staggering by the time of midnight mass. This leads to them being kicked out of the church. Afterwards when they arrive at home they decide to give her dad a present - a lighter from the 1920s. With this he decided to light the tree on fire, which destroyed it as well as the ornaments and all the presents they bought. This scene makes the readers feel empathy towards Jeanette and her family and once again shows the recurring symbolism of fire throughout the novel.
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While I acknowledge that there is an abundance of pathos-evoking substance in this memoir, I could not help but realize the lack of it also. What I mean by this is that Jeanette's stories could've had the potential to move me to tears, but they didn't. As we all know, she is a brilliant writer and would have no difficulty taking that extra step, taking pathos to a whole other level. For example when Jeanette and her siblings are limited to Erma's basement during a storm, she makes it sound almost positive when she says "...Lori, Brian, Maureen and I were glad we all shared one bed. As soon as we got home from school, we'd climb under the covers with our clothes on and do our homework there" (page 147). She makes it seem like it was an adventure when she most definitely could have made it sound as worse as it most likely was. The lack of pathos throughout the memoir (not necessarily for this example) show that she still has this unconditional love for her parents that will never fade, and she did not want to credit them as being sorry excuses for parents, which the evidently were. She never implied that, but used only her stories (without pathos) to leave it up to the readers to form opinions about them.
These are all great examples. Another is when the author describes her hustling at a bar. Not only was she underage but her father was there with her allowing a much older man to hit on her and eventually harass her. Her father later told her that everything was fine because he had make a lot of money because of her and how she distracted the man. This appeals to anger and disgust towards the father for allowing her daughter to be a pawn in his moneymaking scams. He never apologizes for it either which only makes the reader more infuriated with his terrible parenting and allowing his daughter who he "never let down" be sexually harassed and not do anything.
I can see Sydney's side but do u think there is a side to this that lacks pathos because she was optimistic about it and didn't want to make it seem like it was all that bad?
Yes we can almost feel bad for the narrator because she can't see how terribly she has it. We also feel angry that the parents let the children live this way. She doesn't see the horrible conditions she lived in because she was used to it, which we see as horrific and frustrating.
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Maria wrote: "I can see Sydney's side but do u think there is a side to this that lacks pathos because she was optimistic about it and didn't want to make it seem like it was all that bad?"Although we can't be sure, what her true intentions were, we all know Jeanette Walls (or anyone for that matter) would be 'optimistic' about getting bullied, beat up (several times), almost raped (several times), and going hungry, eating nothing but lard sandwiches.
I think her unique perspective shows how she survived. She survived and did not end up on the street (or worse) because of her ability to "see" the adventure or the positives in the obstacles life threw at her. It's her coping mechanism.
