Pathos In Barry Lopez's Life

Barry Lopez, an avid writer and a compassionate advocate for mother nature, is a talented author who conveys the problems that humans inflict on nature through his writing. In Barry Lopez ¨Of Wolves and Men¨ and ¨About this Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory¨ Lopez is able to relate his theme of guilt with the audience through the implementations of literary devices. Throughout both of his works, Lopez is capable of making the audience feel guilty through the literary device of pathos. Pathos, the work of making readers appeal to their emotions through writing, is a strong element that is composed throughout Lopezs work. By implementing pathos into his writing, Lopez is attempting to shame the audience into their biases about nature.

Pathos is the literary device that authors use which is meant to appeal to the readers emotions. Considering Lopezs overall theme of writing is guilt, he has to appeal to his readers emotion. For example, “As much sorrow as the man 's hand conveyed in Nebraska, it meant gratitude too for burying the dead,”(About This Life Lopez 116). By implementing simile and pathos into this paragraph, Lopez appeals to the readers emotions as well as their experiences in which they have had with nature. In this paragraph, he discusses how people experiences: hitting animals would affect their emotions: the man 's hand-if they really knew the basis of nature. This leaves the audience feeling guilty of their actions because they feel as if their everyday actions, such as driving are negatively affecting these animals everyday lives. Pathos and simile are two literary devices which have the capability of making readers connect Lopezs point of view on nature to their own. By doing this, Lopez leaves the audience feeling guilty because they haven 't been considerate enough to the animals that they