Literary notes about pathos (AI summary)
In literature, "pathos" is employed to evoke deep and often bittersweet emotions, ranging from a sense of profound melancholy to an ironic twist of humor. Writers utilize its power to transform descriptions, imbuing scenes and dialogue with an evocative tenderness or tragic gravity. In some works, pathos underscores the mingling of sorrow with unexpected levity, as when comedy and sadness interplay to create a richly layered narrative [1] and [2]. In other instances, the term captures the intimate, personal sorrow of a character or the broader lament of a society, as evidenced when the emotional intensity of a memory or a final farewell is rendered with heartbreaking simplicity [3] and [4]. Overall, pathos in literature serves as a potent device that resonates with readers, drawing them into the quiet spectacle of human vulnerability and resilience [5] and [6].
- The whole scene was an unutterable mixture of comedy and pathos.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker - Humor and pathos make it alive, and you have found your style at last.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - Every one knows the soul-subduing pathos of the funeral service, for who is so fortunate as never to have followed some one he has loved to the tomb?
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving - He thought of the magnificent pathos of his dead body.
— from The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War by Stephen Crane - Who can read that passage, and be insensible to its pathos and sublimity?
— from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass - Pathos has this quality, that it seems ever addressed to one alone.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser
