The three gauges of your classical are ethos, pathos, and logos. Each of these gauges are a persuasive approach to rhetoric. Ethos deals with ethics or judge of character. Pathos deal in emotions and feelings. Logos deals in reason. The characters in Avatar the Last Airbender can also fit this model. The basis of their character can be seen as an embodiment of one of these three gauges. Examples are as follows.

Starting with ethos I feel that since this tenant deals with a judge of character and ethics that a suitable character from the show that embodies these characteristics would be Uncle Iroh. Uncle Iroh is a very ethical character and influences other characters to become more ethical as well. He challenges their character to become better. We can see how he does this with Zuko.

Pathos is based in emotions and feeling and characters that are driven by emotion and feelings, in my opinion, would be Firelord Ozai or Azula. Both of them lead from a standpoint of striking fear into their subjects in order to get compliance. They are very prideful and overconfident. This ultimately ends in their demise but for the sake of argument I feel as though these two are an accurate choice for a personal representation of pathos.

For Logos I think the most accurate character to represent this tenant would be Sokka or possibly King Bumi. We get more interaction and see more development with Sokka than we do Bumi but I feel he’s also a fair candidate. They are both very intelligent and we see them employing abstract thinking. Sokka is very much a reason and logic type of individual.

These are characters and examples of characters that for the most part stay within one of these tenants. However there are other characters that will go from one to another and that is something that we see in the show as well. Example of this would be Prince Zuko starting off in pathos because he is trying to regain honor and is very emotion driven and we can see that in his rage however we see him by the end of the show coming into the tenant of ethos after the tutelage of his uncle. Aang also fits this transition from pathos to ethos because in the beginning we see him running from his problems and operating on an emotional level in fear but as he goes through his journey we see him have more interactions with the other tenants.