Ghent, Natale. All The Way Home.
In the novel, All The Way Home, there is a good use of pathos. Pathos is quality in art or literature that creates a sense of emotion in the reader, often one of pity or sympathy. In All The Way Home, Nat's family is struggling finacially. Nat's mother didn't make much money to start off with, but when she got too sick to work anymore, what was already a problem finacially turned into an even worse problem. Nat, being the oldest child of him and his two sisters, Queenie and Cal, felt like he should take matters into his own hands. "We're going to loose the house if we don't pay the bills. Do you want to live on the streets, Queenie? We are poor. Nothing's ever going to get better." (98, Ghent) This quote uses pathos to make you feel sympathy for the characters. It makes it clear that the family is poor, and that they are going to loose all that they have if they don't start paying their bills. For me as a reader, I think that pathos is a significant stylistic device for an author to use because it gets me involved with the characters and the circumstance. All The Way Home is a story of a stuggling family, which does not make it a very happy story... Natale Ghent uses pathos frequently to create that sense of emotion.
