In the film Lean on Me, Morgan Freeman’s goal as the principle to the notoriously criminal and underperforming East Side High School is to make the students want to get an education and become something of themselves. The above clip contains his motivational speech an hour before they take the state test that they’ve prepared for during the past two and a half months. Almost as soon as he begins to speak he says that “they say you are inferior, you are just a bunch of niggas, and spics, and poor white trash.” This type of language is pathos-based language that rides on the audience’s emotions as it did in the clip when the students expressed their disapproval towards such notions. More pathos is used in the claim that the outside world believes that an education is wasted on them and that they cannot learn.
Using such language may seem counterproductive at the surface but as the principle of the school he channels Eunoia which is the culmination of his qualities that make him trustworthy. In this case Eunoia comes from his professional attire, his posture, and his position as the principle. It is in this way that he rallies the students against the outside world and for their own success and the principle’s message when he finally says “you are not inferior. Your grades may be, your school might have been, but you can turn that around and you can make liars out of those bastards in exactly one hour when you take that test, pass it, and win.” Through his use of Eunoia, he is granted the agency to use strong pathos-based language in order to make the students believe in his good will and thusly rally behind it as a motivational tool.
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