Dorothy Allison’s purpose in Panacea is to show that insignificant items like food can mean much more than a meal to some people. According to Allison, food can trigger thoughts and emotions in people. She goes about showing this by using imagery and a pathos approach to emotionally link thoughts to food. In the real world, this idea may be seen in a man whose reminiscence of his passed away grandfather is triggered by eating a particular flavor of ice cream. In the story, the main food item is gravy, which is used as a trigger for the narrator to reminisce about their childhood. This connection is made because the narrator’s mother made especially good gravy. The fact that the mother made better gravy than anyone else is a use of pathos,