appeal to 'pathos'

Appeal to 'pathos' is such a powerful rhetorical device because it is the 'corner of the triangle' which deals with the audience. The text says pathos is Greek for "suffering" and "experience" and often associated with emotional appeal. When thinking about 'pathos' in your writing, you usually want to tie some kind of experience that you've had in your writing, or even about a situation that was "suffering", meaning a situation that wasn't good, also known as a bad experience. You would want to write about an experience, or even a bad experience so the audience could have a picture in their mind of what was going on and how you (the writer) felt while they were going through the sitation. Appealing to 'pathos' allows you to get into your own emotion so the reader can also feel and see what you (the writer) is feeling and seeing. When writing to an audience, you think about how you can make the reader open to your message, how you can best appeal to the reader's values and interests, and how you can engage your reader emotionally and imaginatively.