Where the Crawdads Sing: Pathos 1 key example

The rhetorical technique of pathos is the use of language or storytelling to appeal to an audience’s emotions and influence their feelings and responses to support an argument. Writers use pathos to create an emotional response that helps persuade or move the reader; lawyers use it to make the judge and jury sympathize with their clients. Here, Tom creates pathos through language that makes the jury confront their own roles in Kya’s suffering. Tom states plainly that, although the town could have helped her, it instead left Kya “hungry and cold” and “abandoned” for most of her life. He describes what Kya endured using short, simple sentences that force the listener to picture Kya as a child struggling alone. This choice to call out the town’s inaction makes the people in the courtroom feel complicit in her pain and question their treatment of her. The contrast Tom draws between the town’s rumors about the “Marsh Girl” and Kya’s lived reality strengthens the emotional effect. The lawyer lists the exaggerated legends that people gave Kya: “part wolf,” “missing link,” and having eyes that “glowed in the dark.” He sets these ideas against the truth that she was really only a child left alone to survive. This comparison exposes how prejudice and fear can strip a person of their humanity and justifies the reader’s sense of outrage and sadness at her treatment.

The rhetorical question at the end of Tom's statement deepens the pathos. When the lawyer asks, “did we exclude Miss Clark because she was different, or was she different because we excluded her?” he turns the townspeople's attention toward their own responsibility. This use of pathos invites the jury and the townspeople to feel guilt and shame for their choices, in the hopes they will quit Kya of the crime she's accused of.