Rocking the Pathetic Fallacy

The dictionary defines pathetic fallacy as the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature.  It’s not so much a fallacy or falsehood as it is a figure of speech — otherwise all fiction could be called a lie (!), and we know fiction is often the bearer of deep truths. Nor is it a pitiable trait in literature: pathetic means here dealing with emotions, and as a reader, I say the more emotions in a book the better. Originally, when nineteenth-century art critic John Ruskin cooked up the phrase, he meant it to refer to the attribution of human feelings to nature or natural objects in particular, and while time and use have expanded that meaning somewhat, I’d like to reflect a little about how we can make use of Ruskin’s idea to spice up our writing today.

Let Nature Smile, or…

We all know it’s better to show than to tell. When your protagonist is blue or angry or on top of the world, she betrays it with every word and action. But she also filters the world around her through the lens of her own feelings. We’re just that self-centered as human beings. To a couple in love, the sea smiles and beckons to a future of limitless possibilities. To someone who has just suffered bereavement, that same sea seems bleak and lonely, if not downright malevolent. Use this reality of the human psyche to amp up the emotions of your characters. You do want to show their setting, right? So show it as they perceive it, colored by their own feeling. The brooding sea. The joyous clouds. It’s one more reason not to have to say, “She felt blue.” The pathetic fallacy lays a blue filter over every other thing you’ve said about the scene and intensifies every color. So much more effective! It really puts us inside that character’s head.

Atmospheric Pressure

Of all the many wonderful books I’ve read in a long lifetime of readership, the ones I remember most are those that were deeply atmospheric. This is broader than a single character’s mood. It deals with the mood of the world. Not every novel needs pervasive atmosphere, but many have it, and I adore them. Think of that genre we call “Noire.” The grit, the cynicism, the corruption. This is a world where solving one crime isn’t going to make a dent in the overall darkness. No wonder everybody smokes. But don’t you love it? One of my favorite books as a teen was Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Sword at Sunset, a kind of realistic Late Roman King Arthur story. It was great writing on many levels, but what lingers hauntingly in my mind after all these years was the sense of doom, the inevitability of the end that permeated everything. The weather. The time of day. Was it always really sunset? I doubt it, but it felt that way. The lights were going out in every sense. Why has the televised version of Game of Thrones made a mantra of “Winter is coming”? Because the paralyzing hardships of that season encapsulate the entire hopeless emotional atmosphere that permeates the story.

Atmosphere. Bring it on!

Get Pathetic

So don’t be shy about giggling brooks and scowling weather. But don’t be careless with such personifying adjectives either. Be sure they contribute toward your desired effect. There are so many effects you can paint with moonlight, for example; stay within one consistent emotional framework to expand the reader’s comprehension of your character’s mood or the mood of her world.  And let Mother Nature write at your side.