Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - László Dányi: On the Bad Side of the Fence: Fiascos of Southern Ethos

relationship to my four ethos categories. Instead of saying that there are some reverses and set-backs in human life, I would rather announce

—without any implication of pessimism but with the implication of persistence and endurance

—that ultimately almost all of the characters' strivings end in failure and they must face this. Most of the errands in life do not work properly, and this fact must be coped with persistence and stoic acceptance. If we observe the cyclical patterns of ethos 1—intentions-acts-consequences

—ethos 2, it is vindicated that intentions prove to be incongruent with the final outcome of acts. Owing to this deterioriation in the trajectory from ethos 1. which is the set of norms considered before acts, and ethos 2, which is the set of norms out of which judgments spring up after acts, most of the situations in which characters act are humiliating. They are commited to failure because their acts are not only determined by the past and the present but also by the future which on the one hand imposes judgments over the acts and even intentions, on the other hand the "what might they say" brings the influence of the future into our decisions. The juxtaposition of ethos to pathos unveils their relationship to each other. Ethos approaches the problem from the point of view of a system (group, community, society, etc.), whereas pathos from the individual^ point of view. Ethos is the nicely and properly sewn textile with immaculately woven fibres, and pathos is the labor with all the struggle, frustration and complacency through which individual patterns appear on it. As the previous parts show I try to formulate a theoretical network related to the "structure" of ethos, which could establish the core consideration of this essay. In spite of all my strivings to pave the way for my analysis I must also admit the following discrepancies. Firstly, my assumption is that the elements of the aforementioned ethos system can be observed from different angles in the authorwork-reader triangle, and can only be differentiated arbitrarily, therefore in a literary work they are interrelated and they constitute different systems depending on the reader's and the author's modes of critical understanding which is "undermined by a family of metaphors to which we continue to cling with obsessive tenacity" (Stevick 192). Furthermore, in deconstructionist ethics even the ethos of reading 177