Pathos In Home Alone

Home Alone The comedy film Home Alone produced in 1990 by Hughes Entertainment effectively and heavily relies on the use of pathos through its imagery. Many members of a large family may see this film poster and have it automatically tie into their fear of being left home alone as a child while someone is trying to break into their house. Along with that it also utilizes a bit of ethos as well as logos. The film poster includes the image of a scared child who seems to be screaming along with two men who appear to be some sort of robbers behind him. This film poster makes use of word phrases such as, “he kicks some butt” which may grab the viewers' attention. The family member viewing this may begin to question and wonder how this child survives

Consequently, one of the two men that are stationed behind this child seems to be smiling and enjoying the fact that they are terrorizing this child, while the other seems to be angry or fed up with the fact that a child is even in the equation. All of this strongly adds to the appeal of pathos which strengthens the posters' effect that it has on the audience’s feelings or emotions of a child being left home alone by themselves. The audience viewing this poster may feel a sense of sadness along with a bit of anger because they may feel bad that a child is left home by himself during a family vacation and on top of that, it is also the holidays. The sense of anger may come because the viewer may be angry at the child’s family and think to themselves, “what kind of people leave their child behind and dos not come back to get them?” Also in the background of the picture are Christmas lights and snow which helps the viewer understand that this film is developing around the holiday

Logically, from a child’s point of view, they would almost never be able to fight off two grown men. Yet it directly says on the poster, “he kicks some butt” and also states that it is a comedy film which tells the audience that Kevin is the one who is going to be in control of the whole movie. Going back to Kevin’s appearance, it is very misleading to the audience, because they can assume that Kevin is never truly frightened or scared throughout the entire film. This film poster does a great job of providing the main idea of the entire movie through all of the imagery it displays on this particular film