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

I'm another English lit graduate who's never heard the term. Although I remember that a LOT more grammar and technical terms came onto the curriculum after my time.

I learnt this in secondary. Maybe year 9/10 ish? I was quite taken with it (and how much it's used, once you have a term for it). I went home, talked to my family about it - who, for some reason didn't believe me that it was a thing, until my older cousin studying A-levels came along and confirmed, that yes, it did exist.

Not sure why it's 'pathetic' though!

I don't remember learning about it 30+ years ago but there was no literature aspect to my English GCSE and I never studied literature. I'm learning about things like that now on a writing course.

Have to say though that in spite of English being one of my best subjects at school and being a lawyer and bookworm, I am utterly hopeless at helping DD2 with her GCSE and we got her a tutor. And I would have been bored witless with the content of the course as it is now.

pathetic fallacy is when a writer gives human emotions and motivations to things which are, in fact emotionless. People have used weather as an example, but it doesn't have to be weather, it could be anything. So when a character is in emotional torment or angry, the author may ramp that up by saying that there is a storm that mirrors the character's emotions. But we all know that weather is just weather; it just happens, it isn't in 'sympathy' with anyone.

So it's giving human characteristics, emotions and intent to objects or happenings which don't actually have feelings. Hence 'fallacy' because it's not true and 'pathetic' because its about feelings (from 'pathos' - not using 'pathetic' in its common meaning of 'a bit shit')

Well ideally, but in all honesty the important bit is to pick up on the fact that the writer has found ways of mirroring, and thereby highlighting, the character’s emotional state and using the term isn’t necessary for that.

I had never heard of it, but my third dc is now doing her GCSEs so now very familiar with the term :-)

But that’s not pathetic fallacy. Pathetic fallacy is attributing human emotions to inanimate things to reflect the mood of a character. You example just shows that it’s cloudy! “The storm raged”, on the other hand, is pathetic fallacy.

Ironically, your pupil’s tutor was more accurate than you are.

It’s actually the correct definition. Most posts on this thread, ironically, don’t really understand what pathetic fallacy is.

https://literaryterms.net/pathetic-fallacy/

It’s becoming increasingly clear to me why some teachers perhaps don’t teach the term and just leave the students to comment on the text without misapplying a term.
For a thread populated by people who mostly claim to have learned the term while still a babe in arms, there’s an awful lot of confusion around it.

As Albertcamusflage says, it is a term coined by John Ruskin to signify the attribution of human feeling to inanimate objects or natural phenomena. It is pathetic in one of the senses of the original Greek word παθοσ, ie feeling, emotion, passion, rather than something pitiable.

Why? Why is it necessary to have a label? I’d bet large sums that Emily Bronte knew exactly what she was doing without ever having heard or used the term.

You can talk about it without using a particular term, but humans like labelling things, and if it hadn't been Ruskin, someone else would have come along and said, this thing where writers use the weather and so on to reflect a character's mood, let's call it "mood reflection" or something, rather than explaining the whole thing every time. It's just a shorthand.

Both are examples of pathetic fallacy. The clouds becoming grey is pathetic fallacy as they are mirroring the character’s feelings.

“Mood reflection” might have been better than bringing phalluses into it.

You're repeating the same argument you made several comments ago, so I will repeat the response I gave you last time:

Nor is it necessary to use the word 'irony' when discussing the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice, but given that it's an excellent example of it, why wouldn't you?

Yup learnt this in GCSE english

No, because grey is not an emotion. Pathetic fallacy is about ascribing human emotions to the natural environment. Grey is simply a colour. It has connotations beyond that but it’s not in itself an emotion.

I thought pathetic fallacy is the weather mirroring emotions. Ascribing human emotions is personification isn't it?

As I said earlier, if you knew the term you would/could. How can you use a term you’ve never heard of?

I've never heard the term but my primary education was heavily disrupted by teacher strikes in the early 1980s and secondary because school was closed for extended periods each winter due to the boiler failing.

I suspect there is a lot of gaps, for example, I never remember learning what an adverb was and I know a significant part of my A level maths syllabus was never covered.

Also, I don't know if it is still the case, but there were different exam boards with different syllabuses. I don't think the national curriculum was a thing then.

That's just not true. Ruskin coined the phrase to aid understanding. In it, pathetic doesn't mean anything derogatory at all. Pathetic is attributed to emotions (as in sympathetic/empathetic etc). Wikipedia has a very clear definition and history of the phrase.

Is it just weather related? I’m trying to think of other things that would work….

could things like a quiet church or busy market, a live band / huge gig be used the same way?

Ruskin was talking purely in terms of the natural world when he coined the term, but certainly writers have attributed ‘false’ emotions to non-natural entities that are thus carrying part of the emotional freight of a scene. The band playing the song that you and the partner who has just ditched you is suddenly ‘cruel’. The light coming through the stained glass church feels kind and benign because that’s where you just got a text with good news.

I teach A level. You wouldn’t even get a good A level grade with just spark notes.

Hate to throw another cat amongst the pigeons but I think the first line of P and P is more sarcastically humourous than ironic. Sorry to all. I mean still the best opening line to a novel ever, but ironic, I'm not sure.