How Does Sophocles Use Pathos In Medea

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Sophocles’ Medea is built upon the emotions of its characters. Emotion, although vital for our survival, creates numerous physiological boundaries, which in result, can manipulate our reasoning and create potential biases which affect our thought process. Throughout the duration of the play, Sophocles utilizes pathos in order to justify Medea’s final action, which is the murder of her children, and this blow is softened through the application of argument ad passions, a common logical fallacy, which is an extremely effective persuasive device, as it targets our emotions directly. Sophocles brings forward Medea’s past experiences, and instead of presenting facts, uses persuasive language in order to develop an emotion-based argument. Throughout the duration of the play, pathos is reinforced extensively, to a degree that at multiple points, we trample over our own human morals, and coincide with the murder of the children. Medea’s fear of exile, loneliness, and humiliation, allows us to visualize the full extent of pathos throughout the text.…show more content…
“Who am I to turn now?” (l. 504) suggests that Medea is already “banished without a friend” (l. 711-712), and gradually the audience is able to understand the extent of her emotional background, coming to a conclusion that she is emotionally unstable. Built upon the previous lines, Sophocles shows to us – in reality, what a lonely state Medea is in, by describing her situation as “you have your city here and the homes where your fathers have lived … [but I’m] abandoned, homeless” (l. 252-258), which is valid, thus making a . We are able to acknowledge her lone being, and can agree that it not desirable, which leads the murder of her children, once an inhumane action to us, to become more

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