Pathos is a rhetorical device concerned with making an appeal to the emotions. Abigail Williams, in The Crucible, is a character whose wild accusations of witchcraft are based purely and solely on emotional foundations. This distinguishes her from Reverend Hale, among others, who tries to use logos or logical argument to persuade others that the accused are guilty.
While eating at Parris's house Abigail screams and falls to the floor, claiming she has been...
Pathos is a rhetorical device concerned with making an appeal to the emotions. Abigail Williams, in The Crucible, is a character whose wild accusations of witchcraft are based purely and solely on emotional foundations. This distinguishes her from Reverend Hale, among others, who tries to use logos or logical argument to persuade others that the accused are guilty.
While eating at Parris's house Abigail screams and falls to the floor, claiming she has been stabbed by Elizabeth's evil spirit using the doll that Mary Warren had given her. (She actually stabbed herself; this shows just how much she wants to destroy Elizabeth). She is effectively accusing Elizabeth of being a witch and using the seventeenth century equivalent of a voodoo doll to harm her.
The accusation is obviously ridiculous; the needle is used for sewing and has been stuck into the doll by Mary to keep it from being lost. However, Abigail is not trying to convince anyone on logical, rational grounds; she is appealing to the emotions. By this point in the play, emotions in Salem are running very high, so high, in fact, that in an atmosphere of near total hysteria people are prepared to believe just about any accusation of witchcraft no matter how demonstrably ridiculous.
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