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In the novel I am currently reading, it is said that someone hits the iron:

"...raining blows down on the victim"

I originally thought that this was pathetic fallacy, as the author is using the weather (rain) to describe an action, though I realised that pathetic fallacy only occurs with thoughts and feelings. Is this still pathetic fallacy or something else?

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  • This is what is known as metaphor. By the way, the "pathetic fallacy" is only applicable to fallacies, i.e. components of a logical argument which are ill-founded and thereby implicate or at least cast doubt on the argument in its entirety. In normal prose, what you're calling the "pathetic fallacy" is actually just anthropomorphism or personification, which is ubiquitous (do you think using rabbits as the protagonists in Watership Down was a "fallacy", e.g.?).
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 19:00
  • I'm not sure I understand the sentence; shouldn't it be "rain" and not "raining"?
    – user180089
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 19:25
  • @V0ight Why? Depends on context. "I saw him knock Joe over and just start raining blows down on the victim".
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 19:39
  • @Dan Bron ~ I see now; the problem was that OP capitalized 'raining' for some reason which led me to believe that it was the first word in a sentence fragment. Silly me
    – user180089
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 19:41

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The question is whether the construction, 'raining blows down on the victim' is a pathetic fallacy or any other literary technique?

Passively, something rains down (on); actively, somebody rains something on something else.

In the usage under consideration, human trait is not ascribed to nature, which would make it pathetic fallacy. Human action is likened to a natural phenomenon. So it is not a pathetic fallacy; it is a metaphor.

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The verb form of rain actually means this (incidentally with an exactly matching example with yours):

  1. to deal, hurl, fire, etc., repeatedly: to rain blows on someone's head.

So, the author used raining only as a regular verb and not as a pathetic fallacy.

Mentioning this just for completeness sake: pathetic fallacy means the following as per Wikipedia.

The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attributing of human emotion and conduct to all aspects within nature. It is a kind of personification that is found in poetic writing when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent.

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