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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
Part 4, Chapter 1: Magpies
Explanation and Analysis—Dead Mother:
As An-Mei uncovers the realities of the Wu Tsing’s household, her mother’s turtle parable can only take her so far. She tries to hold in the secret sorrows and injustices until the week of New Year’s, when her mother kills herself by poisoning:
And then I recalled her story about the little turtle, his warning not to cry. And I wanted to shout to her that it was no use. There were already too many tears. And I tried to swallow them one by one, but they came too fast, until finally my closed lips burst open and I cried and cried, then cried all over again, letting everybody in the room feed on my tears.
Weighted with pathos, this death scene moves the reader in its heartbreaking events. It reads like the unbearable culmination of a thousand injustices—the reproaches from her Popo and uncle, the second wife’s cunning, the gender roles that have ruined her mother’s life and her own. An-Mei grows up with an absent, abused mother, lives through the shame of social transgression, and loses her family. The suffocating social conventions of 20th-century China are not so much mentioned as felt. In this moment of tragedy, the oppressive and unnamed realities burst through at last; An-Mei cannot accept them anymore. The death of her closest relation in the world—whose own story was misunderstood by all—punctures the pleasant fictions that had sustained her and lays bare the brutal misfortunes in her life.
Related Themes:
