One of my favorite things of all time is that every six months I get the opportunity to listen to the Prophet and the Apostles who speak about different things we can do to improve our lives.
This October, 2014, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf gave a talk entitled "Is it I?" at the Saturday evening Priesthood Session. In this talk, Uchtdorf helps us understand how important it is to analyse our lives instead of the lives of others by using parables with pathos to teach his point.
The first parable that Uchtdorf uses is that of a beautiful yard: "This neighbor kept his lawn perfectly manicured, flowers always in bloom, the trees healthy and shady. It was obvious that the neighbor made every effort to have a beautiful lawn." He later goes on to explain how another neighbor notices a dandelion in the yard and thinks of all the things he can do to remove it and judges the neighbor even though his own yard is full of dandelions: "These thoughts totally occupied his mind as he walked toward his own home. He entered his house without even glancing at his own front yard—which was blanketed with hundreds of yellow dandelions." This is a story that everyone can relate to which creates pathos and helps the audience understand how many times we judge others by their small imperfections when we don't realize our own problems are considerably larger.
Another parable that Uchtdorf uses is one from the Bible that the Savior Himself taught: "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? …
“… First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye." (Matthew 7: 3,5) This shows how hard it is for us to help others with their problems when we ignore our own. In this parable it would be impossible to help someone remove a mote from their eye if in our own eye we have a beam and cannot see clearly.
From the few points we looked at we can see how President Uchtdorf uses parables to gain pathos to teach.
From the few points we looked at we can see how President Uchtdorf uses parables to gain pathos to teach.
