Kingsolver employs pathos to draw the reader into the lived reality of systemic violence and displacement:

But of course there was more to the picture. Police everywhere, always. Whole villages of Indians forced to move again and again. As soon as they planted their crops, Estevan said, the police would come and set their houses and fields on fire and make them move again. The strategy was to wear them down so they’d be too tired or too hungry to fight back[.]

The passage appeals directly to the reader’s empathy by foregrounding the repeated suffering of entire communities. The specificity of the destruction—burning houses and fields, the loss of newly planted crops—renders the injustice tangible, transforming abstract political oppression into a scene the reader can see, hear, and feel. The repetition of “again and again” reinforces the relentlessness of the persecution, emphasizing that this is not an isolated atrocity but a grinding, systemic tactic meant to erode resistance over time.

Estevan’s matter-of-fact delivery of these events stands in stark contrast to the brutality of what he describes. This calmness intensifies the pathos: it suggests a weary familiarity with such cruelty, where shock has been replaced by endurance. By embedding such a harrowing account in the rhythm of everyday conversation, Kingsolver underscores how normalized violence can become for those forced to survive it.

The emotional force of the passage lies in its insistence on the human cost—families uprooted, labor destroyed, communities stripped of stability. The reader is left not only with outrage at the injustice but also with sorrow for the exhaustion and hunger deliberately inflicted on those least able to defend themselves. This blend of vivid detail, repetition, and tonal restraint makes the scene resonate as both an indictment of systemic oppression and a deeply personal account of loss.