Pathos blog

In my opinion, the most interesting of Aristotle's appeals is pathos.  The other two appeals seem more concrete to me.  A logical appeal is obvious and straightforward.  It includes facts and statistics.  In building ones ethos, they simply have to state what makes them a credible and reliable source.  However, in pathos, the writer must skillfully create his argument in a way that appeals to his specific audience's emotions.  Certain words draw more emotion from readers than others.  For example, "heartbroken" evokes more emotion than "sad."  This intrigues me because it takes a lot of thought and effort from the author to be able to evoke emotion from the readers through his or her writing.

One blatant example that comes to mind when I think of pathos is the ASPCA commercial that tries to entice people to donate to their organization in order to help animals.  They play the saddest music and show gut-wrenching pictures of abused animals that are extremely difficult to look it.  This is a very obvious use of pathos because I think that everyone watching these commercials becomes sad and sympathizes with those poor animals.  This means that the commercial has done its job because many people will decide to act on that and donate to ASPCA.  I think it is interesting to see how effective using sad music and horrific pictures can be to make people open their wallets.  Obviously it is for a great cause but I am just saying that it is interesting to see how they went about marketing their business.

Another example that comes to mind is how products often have a "Made in America" sticker that is set on an American flag.  I consider myself a very patriotic person, so I enjoy seeing this on products I buy.  One could even say it makes me feel like I am completing my civic duty.  This sticker evokes an intense feeling of patriotism from a lot of American consumers.  I think it is very interesting to see how these companies market their products through the use of pathos.