Barbara Ascher Essay On Compassion

In her essay, “On Compassion”, Barbara Ascher uses ethos and references to Greek tragedy to demonstrate the purpose of her essay; that compassion can be learned by witnessing the adversity or poverty around you, and that we should not ignore the helpless, because they remind us of our own selves. Ascher also uses examples of current events related to the homeless to emphasize her perspective on compassion. She believes that compassion is something that is learned, not a character trait. Ascher uses pathos to convey the purpose of her essay. Ascher suggested that living in a big city like Manhattan allows you to see more poverty and homelessness than places like Wyoming, and that even though a lot of people in the city want to escape that, those conditions allow them to start to empathize with the homeless. A New Yorker herself, she most likely sees some form of homelessness everyday, and has probably learned to feel compassion for those that live in poverty, hence her belief that compassion …show more content…
Ascher states that the purpose of Greek Tragedy was to inspire empathy in the audience, and compares it to the homeless, that they keep us humane. The only difference would be that this is real life. It keeps us humane because for a lot of people, homelessness could one day be their reality, and they should be kind to them while they’re doing well. Ascher mentions some of the current issues with the homeless that were present at the time she wrote the essay to emphasize her point. During the winter, the mayor of New York decided to move the homeless off the streets and into hospitals, which had also raised the question of which the rights of the homeless were being violated by involuntary hospitalization. Ascher believed that although the mayor was being compassionate, it was a way of getting rid of the worrisome presence of the homeless which had taught us how to feel compassion in the first