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Kelsie Didericksen
Erickson
English 1010
10/29/14
Imagine watching your mother lose her life to ovarian cancer at the age of seven. She
was a Filipino immigrant who had little to no money she could leave you with. It had always
been just you and her against the world and now she has been ripped away from you. Imagine
the way you would have felt having your mother, your only parent, leave the world when you
were so young and innocent. Not only did you just lose your mother, but now, you are being
thrown into foster care. You are not sure how to feel or what is going to happen next. You have
nobody to guide you through this terrible tragedy and you cannot help but feel all alone. You
move from foster home to foster home for a few years until finally you end up on the streets
because you have nowhere else to go. This is, sadly, the terrible tragedy for many children in
todays society. Roel Williams just happens to be one of them.
In the article, Putting an end to child homelessness, Robert J. Vickers reports the story
of Williams and his abusive experiences in the cruelty of the world. Vickers uses emotion and
data to explain and try to convince you that child homelessness should be a pressing matter. His
article, however, less then convinced us that child homelessness matters. In his article, he uses
an excellent amount of pathos, but he had little ethos and almost no logos. Pathos was by far the
most portrayed in this article.
Vickers uses pathos very effectively in his article. In this article, Vickers writes about the
speech Williams made at the luncheon fundraiser for The Mockingbird Society. The
Mockingbird Society is a foundation funded to help foster child in need. They raised money for
homeless children by holding fundraisers such as this luncheon. At the luncheon Williams shares

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his life stories of being forced into the foster care system after his only parent dies. He talks
about how he went though abuse. One of the foster families he lived with even kept him highly
sedated. Williams had a school councillor who encouraged him to drop out of high school.
Eventually things seemed to turn up for Williams but it still was not easy. Vickers uses these
stories from Williams life to make you sympathize with what he went through. Many writers use
this technique to make the reader more convinced by their Article. There are also more of
examples of this technique throughout the rest of the article.
Vickers also uses more of Williamss life to portray pathos. He then talks about how
eventually a friends mother took him in but it still was not easy. He said, There was only a
modicum of stability that came with it. He had no identification, which made it extremely hard
for him or any child in foster care, to get a job. When Williams had landed a fast food job, it was
extremely hard for him to cash his checks without an ID. Vickers uses words in his article like
hammered, riveted, harrowing, and slapped. Using words like this create a gut-wrenching
feeling when you read them, these words are great examples of pathos. Vickers uses all these life
events and words as examples of pathos to make us want to prevent homelessness for children.
Vickers continues on with pathos by taking about Williams speech and what he meant by it.
In his speech, Williams tries to make his audience want to fight for the children. He says,
Each of you has the power to make a gift to the Mockingbird to truly change a life, just like the
Mockingbird has changed mine. This is an excellent example for pathos because he tries to use
emotions to make us believe his opinions, and he does an extremely good job of it. If pathos
were the only thing need to make a convincing argument Vickers would have nailed it, but it is
not. In order to make a successful argument you also need ethos and logos as well as pathos.
Vickers uses a fair amount of logos in his article, but not nearly enough to convince his
readers to help with child homelessness. Vickers uses some numbers to catch the attention of his
audience but no real data. One example he uses is the number of places Williams had lived in by

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the time he was 17. Vickers says, By the age of 17 and having lived in 14 different homes,
shelters and group homes, Williams figured he was better off on his own. He uses this data to
make his readers feel bad for Williams and want to help other homeless children in need, but
one example is just not enough.
Vickers uses one more example of logos. He uses the amount of money the state gave
Williams every month after he turned 18 as another example. In the article it states, He landed
some transitional housing and $4,000 in state support funds. He uses this example to make the
reader stop and think about how much money $4,000 really is. He wants the reader to think
about how that may not be enough to live on. That example kind of, however, does the opposite
of what it was meant to. It makes readers believe that if the state is giving homeless children
money and housing after they turn 18 then there is no reason for us to help. With the data shown
here the article would doubtfully convince anyone that helping homeless children is the right
thing to do. Vickers uses even less ethos in his article then he does logos.
Ethos is an incredibly powerful tool and should be used in every effective article. Yet,
Vickers barely uses it in his. The only credible person that Vickers in mentions in the Article is
Roel Williams who is The Societys Youth Network Seattle Chapter Leader of the Mockingbird
Society, a local non-profit dedicated to improving foster care and ending child homelessness.
Williams however, would not be the more credible person to use, especially when it was the
only one used in the article. Vickers article just did not have enough credible information to
make the reader convinced. Williamss story was about the only convincing thing in the article.
Once Williams landed all the money and a place to live, he started to party. He had little
supervision and because of this, he had multiple run-ins with the law. When he did not show up
for his court dates, warrants went out for his arrest, and he lived in fear for many months. The
law however, finally caught up with him and he served his time in Jail. Williams believed that
Jail was good for him and that it really motivated him. Williams got lucky. He could have end

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up with a worse fate like many other foster children do. Many other homeless children have very
different fates. Some freeze or starve to death as a result of their homelessness.
Although the article was less than convincing, because it did not include an equal
amount of logos, pathos and ethos need to convince the readers that child homelessness is a very
real thing. Our foster system is packed with children and there just are not enough participants
willing to take them under their wings. Just as William has said, those children need you.
Children need love and nurturing in order to grow and develop properly. Without our love and
support, these children will be at a down fall. You could truly be the difference between
whether or not they have a meal, or whether or not they die, but Vickers could have been more
convincing. With the evidence presented here, no one would jump up now to save the children,
we just were not convinced.