Chapter 2: Logos, Ethos, Pathos

AT THE SECOND MEETING of the Logician's Council, a scroll hung at the front of the hall, next to the slate board, with Core Values written on it in lovely smooth calligraphy. Penso had given Cane the scroll at the end of yesterday’s meeting, asking him to write out the core values and their new title.

Everyone in Terralogica had beautiful penmanship, even Cane. It was part of the brushwork curriculum that they learned from childhood, and even a six-year-old could flare their letters cleanly and gracefully.

Cane’s brushwork was decent by Terralogica standards, but he hated doing it—the painstaking care, the intricate details that made his wrists tired—so he gave the scroll to his little sister, Gatta.

“Mom says you need to write this,” he said, dictating the principles from memory, while Gatta wrote them in a perfect series of loops and strokes and flourishes.

Core Values

Terralogica believes good craftsmanship is worth doing and worth paying for.

Terralogica values honesty.

Terralogica avoids wastefulness.  

“Thank you, Cane, for writing the core values for us,” Penso said, smiling in the direction of the scroll.

“Such lovely brushwork!” cooed Grandma Lucy. “A very talented young man.”

Cane blushed but didn’t say anything.

“Now that you have identified your core values, you can begin to address your problem,” Penso said. “Mayor Moderata, can you please remind us of the problem that brought us here?”

Mayor M. cleared her throat.

“We need to fight back against the attacks on Terralogica’s pottery made by Nemico’s—” She paused for a moment, looking for the newly-learned word. “Marketer.”

“We need to tell everyone that Nemico is a bunch of liars!” Ana pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, one of Nemico’s notices. It looked rumpled and a bit sweaty, like she had been carrying it in her pocket for a few days. “Remember what they wrote: Why buy one when you can buy ten. They need to be punished for this!”

“We can create our own notice,” Grandma Lucy. “Let them know our Terralogica pottery is worth a hundred of their gemella bowls!”

“Our notice should say that Nemico pottery is garbage.” Ana’s small, pointed face lit up with an idea. “It should be a picture of some rotten garbage with the word Nemico written across it.”

“Yes!” said Grandma Lucy. “And under that it should say, you get what you pay for.”

Cugina and Scontro both shook their heads and frowned. Stanca-Eth and Stufo-Eth began whispering back and forth to each other behind cupped hands. Mayor M. furrowed her eyebrows. 

“I don’t like it,” Scontro said. “We should talk about us, not them. Terralogica has always kept to our own affairs.”

“Well, let’s hear your idea, then,” Ana said.

“I’d just write something like, Terralogica Pottery. And then a picture of a bowl, something classy like that.”

Cugina raised her hand. Penso nodded for her to speak.

“Terralogica avoids wastefulness,” Cugina said. “Remember, that one of our core values. Handing out paper is wasteful and makes a mess.”

“We need to get the word out!” Ana said. “That’s more important than not being wasteful!”

“Not being wasteful is important to our credibility,” Mayor M. said. “If we are creating a bunch of garbage while accusing Nemico of creating garbage, we’ll look like hypocrites.”

Penso looked at Cane pointedly, the same expression he used when Cane was studying at the small table in Penso’s tiny house.

“What do you think, Cane?”

Cane wasn’t sure what to think. One the one hand, Terralogica needed to find a way to get the word out about why their pottery was the best. But on the other hand, distributing a bunch of little papers did seem extraordinarily messy and wasteful. Cane hated thinking of someone taking the time to do all that brushwork, only to have it glanced at and thrown away. If only they could give away something more useful, something that wouldn’t be immediately discarded, even something that could be treasured.

“I know!” Cane exclaimed. “Let’s write our message on pottery!”

“On pottery?” Ana asked. “And then, what, give the pottery away for free?”

“Yes!” Cane was so excited he could barely get the words out. “It’s the most logical way to let people know the high quality of our pottery! We could give them a small bowl, the kind for flowers. Let them see for themselves.”

Ana sighed. This was the problem with children; they didn’t understand how anything worked.

“Who’s going to pay for that?” Scontro asked. “If we make a bowl to give away, we’ll lose the money we would get from selling it, and we won’t be able to afford supplies.”

“My office can pay for it,” Mayor M. said. “From the War Fund.”

Ana, Scontro, and Grandma Lucy all gasped.

“We need the war fund for wars!” Grandma Lucy said.

“I think this is a war,” said Mayor M. “It’s not the kind of war we’ve had with Gemella. But Nemico is trying to destroy our village’s very existence. I’d call that a war.”

“It’s a war of words!” Cane said. “A war of ideas!”

“I like using bowls,” Cugina said. “It’s way better than writing on a bunch of papers.”

“All right,” said Penso. “What message will you write on it?”

“We have a message!” Ana said. “Nemico pottery is garbage!”

“No one wants a bowl for flowers with the word garbage on it,” said Scontro.

“Maybe we don’t need to write anything on the bowls,” said Cane. “After all, like Scontro was saying before: Terralogica quality speaks for itself.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, as though they were all having the same thought at once: Cane had found the perfect statement to write on the bowls.

“That’s it,” Mayor M. said.

“What do you think?” Cane asked Penso. “Could that work?”

Penso walked to the slate board and wrote on it with a piece of chalk: Terralogica quality speaks for itself.

“To answer that question,” Penso said, “the first thing you need to determine is your audience. Who are you trying to reach?”

“We should give the bowls to the same people Nemico is trying to reach with their flyer,” Ana said. “Tourists who buy pottery, people in villages around Isola.”

“Also people who already come here to buy our pottery,” Scontro said. “So we don’t lose them to Nemico.”

Penso wrote the word audience, followed by the words current and potential customers on the slate board.

Then, next to those words, he drew a large triangle. The sight of it gave Cane a thrill in his stomach. He knew what the drawing meant: finally, after all this talk about values and audience, it was time for logic. Logic, which was clear-cut and orderly and had the ability to solve any problem. Cane could barely contain his love for it. 

Penso wrote the words Rhetorical Triangle at the top of his drawing. Then he labeled each corner of the triangle, using the following words: logos, ethos, pathos.

“Rhetoric,” Penso said, “is the art of argumentation. And one of the key principles in that art is this triangle. Each corner represents an important component for a strong argument. And in a war of ideas—” He looked over at Mayor M. “Arguments are our weapons.”  

“Cane,” Penso said. “Can you please define each term?”

“Logos,” Cane said. “The argument itself. The words and ideas expressed in an argument.”

Penso nodded.

“Ethos,” Cane said. “Credibility. The speaker’s qualifications, professional demeanor, and use of good evidence.”

Penso nodded again.

“Pathos,” Cane said. “Emotion. Examples or personal connections to make the audience care.”

“Correct,” Penso said. “So, those are the three areas you must make sure to cover.”

He pointed at Cane’s slogan, Terralogica quality speaks for itself.

“What is the logos? In other words, what is your message?”

Everyone looked at each other, unsure of the answer. Cane knew that identifying logos was a bit of a trick question, since it stood for the argument itself, its words and ideas.

“That we have high quality that speaks for itself,” Cane said.

“Good.” Penso wrote high quality speaks for itself next to the word logos. “Now, what is the ethos? What gives your message credibility? Why should people believe you that the quality speaks for itself?”

“That’s obvious,” said Scontro. “Because it’s written on a bowl. They can see and feel the quality with their own senses. The brushwork will be perfect, not that Nemico garbage. If they drop the bowl, it won’t break.”

“All right.” Penso wrote the bowl next to the word ethos. “That is good ethos.”

He turned to Cugina. “What about Pathos? Does the message convey emotions? Does it make your audience care?”

Cugina frowned. “I don’t think it does.”

Scontro let out an exasperated groan.

“We don’t need emotion,” he said. “Credibility is enough. If they see the quality of the bowl, they’ll want to buy it.”

“I don’t know if I would,” Ana said. “If I was looking for a good deal, I might pick the cheaper bowl.”

“What emotion would make you want to buy it?” Penso asked.

“I’d want to know how much the people care about making a good bowl,” Ana said. “I’d want to feel the bowl was made with love.”

Cane raised his hand and waved it in the air.

“Can we add that to the message?” he asked. “Terralogica quality speaks for itself, and on the bottom, Made with love.”

Next to pathos, Penso wrote, made with love. Then he re-traced the triangle with his chalk, charting the path from logos to ethos to pathos and back to logos again.

“I think you’ve got it,” Penso said. “All three corners of the triangle. Logos, ethos, pathos.”  

Cane looked around the room as Penso called a vote. Everyone raised their hands to approve the bowls with the message. Stanca-Eth and Stufo-Eth raised their hands a little higher than they had the day before when voting for the core values.

“Scontro was right,” Grandma Lucy said. “About not insulting Nemico. It shows we have good taste.”

“I want that to be added to the principles,” Scontro said. “Terralogica doesn’t insult others.”

Everyone in the room agreed. Penso went over to the scroll, took a pen from his pocket, and began writing the crossed out the new core value below the others in his horrible handwriting.

A gasp spread across the room. But no one told Penso to stop ruining the scroll; it was too late.  

Ana slid close to Cane on his bench. She leaned close to him and whispered, “I’m so sorry about your brushwork.”

Cane looked at the principles. His eyes stopped on the one about valuing honesty.

“It’s not my brushwork,” he said. “I told Gatta to do it.”

Ana gasped and frowned, and for a moment Cane was sure she was going to yell at him. Then she let out a sigh.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I know how much you hate brushwork.”

As they walked out of the hall, Cane stopped in front of Stanca-Eth and Stufo-Eth. They were both standing still waiting for everyone else to walk past, their medallions with their family’s signature catching the light of the twilight sun streaming through the window.

Don’t bother the Before-People, said a voice in Cane’s head, but he couldn’t help look at them for a moment. He’d never been so close to Before-People before, never sat in a room with them. And they weren’t saying anything in the meetings at all, just sitting, silently observing, and raising their hands for votes. He wanted to know what they thought of this whole situation. Did they consider themselves part of Terralogica’s dilemma with Nemico, or separate from it? Did they have any ideas how to help?

Stanca-Eth looked down at Cane’s and spread their lips into a small but definitely perceptible smile.

“Smart work today,” they said.

It was the first thing Cane had heard either of them say in the two days of meetings.

“Thanks,” Cane said, smiling back.  

Chapter 1/Chapter 3