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Where are pathos, logos, and ethos found in Animal Farm?

Pathos, ethos and logos are the three pillars of persuasion. It is difficult to be persuasive in writing or speech without using all three.


Pathos is the appeal to emotions, ethos is the appeal to credibility or authority (do you believe the writer's or speaker's claims?) and logos is the appeal to logic, usually in the form of facts or statistics.


Although Animal Farm is a fable about animals, it uses all three forms of persuasion.


A chief example of pathos in this novel is Boxer, the strong, dedicated horse who is a true believer in the animal revolution and works harder than everyone else his whole life in honest, whole-hearted support of the dream. It is difficult not to be moved emotionally when he is betrayed in old age: rather than the retirement he has been promised, he is sold to the glue factory.


Orwell achieves ethos by making his animal characters behave like real, believable human beings and by basing his book on events in Stalinist Russia, such as show trials, which most people of his generation would have been familiar with. The book is also believable because we know some humans trick and betray others, so we can believe the pigs would act badly.


Orwell works hard to introduce logos into his tale, for example, by showing in some detail how the animals have to adapt human tools to their own four-legged state. This creates a world that accords with the laws of physics and thus feels real to the reader. 

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