Neo- Classical Schmoesby!

Getting bad news is something that happens to the characters in How I Met Your Mother very often, actually, fairly realistically often. We are going to be criticizing one of those instances this week using Aristotle's rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is the appeal to credibility or character, pathos is the appeal to emotions, and logos is the appeal to reason.

The specific instance we will be focusing on come from "Symphony of Illumination" (S7E12). In this episode, Robin believes she is pregnant with Barney's baby but soon learns she is not only not pregnant, she also is unable to have babies at all. As a very strong female character, she had never been the type of person who wanted kids but finds herself very distraught at this news any ways. She thinks about telling the gang but decides against it because of how they would appeal to her.

Robin tries to engulf herself in Ted's pathos responce

Robin believes that Ted would use pathos. She believes that he would cook her comfort food and massage her while telling her: "It is ok to be sad. Let it out." Robin does not want to deal with this appeal to emotions so decides not to tell Ted. Similarly, she believes Barney would use pathos as well, though in an opposing gesture. She thinks that Barney would do just about anything to make her laugh and she is not ready for those kind of emotions. Lily would also fit into the pathos reactionary group. Robin knows her best friend would be most likely to burst into tears and apologize for everything she has ever said about babies.

Telling Marshall is another side of this that Robin does not want to deal with. She knows that Marshall would start asking her all sorts of questions that she does not know the questions to like: "has she looked into adoption or surrogacy?" This appeal would be the appeal to reason, or logos. This is not something that Robin is ready for in any capacity so she decides to not deal with logos.

Telling Kevin about not being able to have kids

When Robin finally choses to tell someone about her recent health revelation it is when she gets proposed to by Kevin in "The Drunk Train" (S7E16). Robin turns to Marshall and Lily as a successful couple when Kevin first proposes to her and she says she needs to think about it because she is deciding whether to tell him or not. Robin is seeking ethos here. She sees Marshall and Lily as a credible source, because of their relationship experience, and so she goes to appeal to their credibility. In the end, she tells Kevin, they get engaged, she talks to him again, and they break off the engagement.

The appeals to emotion, logic, and credibility are seen in many instances throughout the series but are very prominent in this particular situation. I believe that if Robin had dealt with her friends pathos and logos she would not have had reason to seek out the ethos she did when Kevin proposed. These rhetorical devices were very effective in making her question and understand where she actually stood in this situation.

References:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5_tfwAsPejw/maxresdefault.jpg -- Image of Robin eating cake