This whole blog thing is very new to me, and it makes me a little nervous. So I ask that you all bare with me these first few weeks as I figure this out. :)
Today we discussed these words in class, Ethos, Logos, Pathos....
I'd never heard them before to be honest, but they got me thinking, which method would be most persuasive to me?
In The Iliad book 9, Achilleus is faced with these three types of persuasive tricks when Ajax, Phoenix, and Odysseus come to try to get him back in battle.
Ethos- Having a relational tie to the one trying to persuade you. You'd immediately start to think that you owed them something and therefore you may feel guilty if you refuse their plea.
Pathos- An emotional appeal; feeling the emotion of another person who is practically begging you to do something. You may feel sorry for them because of how desperately they were acting like they needed you.
Logos- The appeal that focuses solely on what you get out of it, the rewards for you accepting the plea.
Out of these tactics we can easily pick which one/s we'd like to think we'd be most influenced by, the one related to relationship and having a duty to another person who we care about. But before they are all laid out in front of us, how can we be sure? Being in a world of materialistic habits, whats to say we wouldn't do something simply for the prizes? Or would we be like Achilleus and reject them all to be more comfortable where we were?
P.s. I commented on Skylar Michelle's post, Camaraderie in the Iliad.
I'm really thinking about your closing question. It's so easy for me to be hard on the characters in this epic but I can't say for certain that I would do any differently. That my priorities and concerns would be any holier, so to speak. I guess what I'm saying is I would like to think that the appeals concerning emotions and relationships would persuade me more than pure glory, but I just can't say that.
ReplyDeleteI like how you laid this out, especially since I couldn't make it to honors today and missed the lecture.:/ I think the most interesting thing you said was that Achilles was "more comfortable" where he was. I think that's a pretty insightful statement about him. We tend to either want to love or hate him, to compare him to everyone else in the epic and say he was good or bad etc. In reality, Achilles isn't really supposed to be compared to other characters, we might be supposed to take him for what he was. Maybe there's a lot of humanity in Achilles that isn't as gloriously romantic as the battlefields. Maybe he's just comfortable right where he is, unpersuaded by arguments of any kind this far in the story.
ReplyDeleteThe questions you posed were challenging and I began to think of what I would do were I in Achilleus' position. Would I have felt compassion for Phoinix who had raised me and cared for me? Would I listen to my trusted friend Odysseus? Would I be angered by Aias statements? I for one hope that I would choose to fight for my friends and my country just to defend them. But like you said, we are so materialistic, who knows what I would choose when presented with all the spoils Achilleus was promised?
ReplyDelete