In their song, "Don't Go Near the Water", the Beach Boys used diction, tone, and mood as their main techniques to appeal to pathos. They start off the song with a very obvious appeal to pathos, singing, "Don't go near the water/ Don't you think it's sad/ What's happened to the water", to develop a sympathetic tone towards nature and convince their audience to do the same. Creating such a sad, pitiful mood right off the bat makes the listener more vulnerable. The Beach Boys describe the pollutants human put in water as "poison floating out to sea" that "now threatens life on land" to use the listener's vulnerability to their advantage and make them feel even worse about how they have been treating the water. Also the song had a generally eerie, spooky sound that made the repeated line, "Don't go near the water", feel like a warning as if the water is dangerous, or, even more likely, that we are dangerous to the water and they are warning us to stay away. Therefore, The Beach Boys use an appeal to pathos in an effort to convince listeners to take better care of our waters.
The ideas in the post are awesome and they demonstrate a clear understanding of pathos, but I think it could have been helpful to distinguish among diction, mood and tone. They seem to blend together a little, which is understandable. However, differentiating slightly between each one could help the reader to better understand the use of Pathos in the song. Also, using parallel structure would help the reader understand better. For example, in the first sentence you mention how they use pathos, in the order of diction, tone and mood. But you mentioned tone first, "to develop a sympathetic tone."
ReplyDelete-Mary H
I agree with Mary's comment about the distinguishing between the different techniques that you pointed out at first. I also think it would have been helpful if you had more analysis that led into the next point. I know this may seem a bit picky, but you jump from the description of the pollutants to the "generally eerie, spooky sound." I think that you did a great analysis of tone, which very easily led into an analysis of mood, but maybe a bit more on diction would have been great because diction (lyrics) of the song always provide so much of an appeal to pathos, logos, and ethos.
ReplyDelete