Pathetic Fallacy - is this a "thing"

[marmia1234]

My sons English report came home ( disclaimers: not in UK and I have a degree in English Literature)
In one section of the test they had to match a quote to its corresponding technique. For example - simile, imagery, metaphor, personification etc. One of those techniques was "pathetic fallacy" . I am flummoxed. Is this a normal thing I just missed somehow? Once he had a stab at which one was the "pathetic fallacy he was stuffed and only got 4 right out of 7 as was a bit discombobulated. Is this a common term in the UK or US
I have googled and it appears to be a version of personification.
Why is it pathetic?
Trying to add poll but seem to be unable.
YABU - everybody knows the term "Pathetic fallacy"
YANBU - WTF nobody has heard of that

Yes but it’s often taught in junior school onwards.

My point, though, is that it’s not an absolute. Some people will have learnt it early on and continue to discuss it way into university, and others will have never heard of it and discuss the same effects with a different name. It really doesn’t matter either way.

Ww teach this in year 3

Completely agree with this. Hence why there are people on this thread with high GCSE and A Level English grades, or English Degrees, who have not heard of the term but who will almost certainly have demonstrated understanding of the concept in order to get those grades / degrees.

While the actual term is useful for deconstructing a text in a more succinct way, it’s not necessary to get your point across and be allocated marks.

I learnt this 30 years ago in my A level English Literature classes. Every time a character is sad on TV and it's raining I think "argh pathetic fallacy"!!

I've never heard the phrase!

I feel like this is what's wrong the way English GCSE is taught and assessed today. It's been reduced to tick boxes. Learn certain key techniques, insert them in your exam answer an lo and behold, you will get a good grade.

Which is a perfectly relevant answer.

What I find slightly bizarre amongst adults are the people whose contribution to this thread is along the lines of 'yes, any decent university would study this in year one!' etc.

I’m 40 and this isn’t one I could remember ever having heard of?!

I know about it as in using the weather to echo the emotional state of the character in a piece of writing.. Does it have other uses

Yes I'm fully familiar with it but I can imagine non-literary types not to be. Just asked partner and he didn't have a clue but he doesn't read.

Yes, those people are giving Hyacinth Bucket energy 😂

I have an English degree that I did in 1988 to 1991. Of course we knew the technique of external environment symbolising internal emotion or atmosphere, it just wasn't called pathetic fallacy. It's not like we didn't do it, it just wasn't called that.

I find it pretty rude that you imply people with older degrees should be embarrassed. It's just that we didn't call it pathetic fallacy.

I’ve taught at three different UK universities, and the issue was always that, with different exam boards and different teaching methods, incoming undergraduates sometimes had very different base levels of literary knowledge. Even some good students found it very difficult to apply literary skills they’ve learned in relation to King Lear to, say, William Burroughs.

Isn’t it pathetic because it evokes pity and fallacy because it isn’t actually true that the sky is weeping etc etc.

Only if you are feeling cold about going to the party and expect there to be a generally frosty atmosphere with people walking on ice around each other

Not a thing in my girls’ grammar school O level days, though instantly recognisable as a standard literary device in the mostly Victorian novels I studied. It’s termed a fallacy because it assumes or implies an unjustified link between the external environment and events that take place.

Pathetic from pathos. Fallacy because the weather doesn't actually pick up on our mood.

Not quite, as others have said. It's things (weather on the whole) reflecting a person's emotions. Giving things feelings - ie treating them as though they are human / is personification.

I did mine in 86 and it definitely was used by my lecturers.

OP’s son is in year 7 so it’s actually YABU

@GooseberryBeret technical terms are not jargon. Would you expect a mechanic to fix a car by talking about the 'bendy pipe' or the 'sparky thing' or would you expect them to have words to describe the parts of the engine? Same with language and literature. We have to be able to describe the bits to talk about them and learn to use them.

And to add to that it doesn't at all sound like something different. It comes from pathos as explained above and the fallacy bit from the fact it's not true that the weather is reflecting feelings.

I don't think I ever learnt about this as a specific term, but you can talk about it without specifically using the term. "Hardy reflects the character's mood in his depiction of the weather at this point, to emphasise how bleak his prospects seem," that sort of thing. You don't need to know the term to recognise its use.

(Was back home in Dorchester yesterday, and moaning to my two non-Dorset friends I was with about how Hardy was compulsory at school, but I did also point out lots of Hardy points of interests along side the Roman town house and stuff, and the weather was that beautiful soft winter sunlight, bathing everything in a golden hue that made it look particularly beautiful, to illustrate why it was a great place to grow up.)

I’m not sure the two are actually different, but rather pathetic fallacy is a specific subset of personification. Ie; it is a type of personification used to reflect apparent ( though not real, hence fallacy) sympathy, empathy or pity ( hence pathetic) for the character’s situation. If it doesn’t exhibit those features it can still be personification more generally.

@MissBattleaxe Exactly what you have written.

Same here @borntobequiet

I always remember my lecturer talking about a character dropping her knitting when she was upset and its symbolism. I think it was in Middlemarch. I would love to have asked George Eliot if actually it was more of an oops butterfingers I’m just clumsy moment. Victorian literature is awash with pathetic fallacy though I have never heard it called that term plus I worked in public and academic libraries for many years, from early 1990’s. So relativley bookish I suppose.

Specific terms have never been in the syllabus. I'm 60. Learnt it somewhere in my English studies. Started teaching in 1988 and have taught it all the way through. It's very useful for eg excerpt analysis on exams. Very useful for some specific writers.
Not all teachers teach all terms and not all texts contain all techniques so you could miss it depending on your mix it teacher and text. It's always been standard in my study lifetime though.