LITERARY FICTION & EMPATHY

Guiding Questions: How can reading fiction help you understand others?  Use Hamlet as an example to explore your own thinking process and reactions to a character's innermost thoughts/struggles.

 

Literary fiction can aid readers in understanding others by putting them directly into the characters mind, putting them in their position, and making it real to where they feel the pressure or range of emotions that the character is feeling. When a reader is forced to make connections and feel what a character is feeling, it allows them to build a skill that they can use with people, that being to successfully read others emotions. Being exposed to someone else's emotions, even a characters, builds empathy and understanding.

 

“Frankly, I agree with the study,” said Albert Wendland, who directs a master’s program in writing popular fiction at Seton Hill University. “Reading sensitive and lengthy explorations of people’s lives, that kind of fiction is literally putting yourself into another person’s position — lives that could be more difficult, more complex, more than what you might be used to in popular fiction. It makes sense that they will find that, yeah, that can lead to more empathy and understanding of other lives.”

 

When characters, such as Hamlet, reveal their innermost thoughts, it allows the reader to make a connection to their own lives. For example, Hamlet's anger towards his mother's lack of grievance, any child would be mad at the lack of respect their mother has for their deceased father. Although I read more popular fiction, than literary, I feel as though when I am exposed to a character's thoughts, I tend to feel as they do. If the character experiences a situation such as Hamlet's, being accused of willingly grieving, called a coward and unmanly, and being too diplomatic and disciplined to respond, then I definitely feel the fueled anger rising and welling up to the point of exploding. And when Hamlet is finally able to release his thoughts in his first soliloquy, I formed a connection, as that is what I do when I am angered by a situation where it was impossible for me to respond. I must also say that when I feel a character is being over dramatic with their range of emotions or their level of emotion, then I just feel disgusted and extremely non-empathetic, as it may all be just an act, and I merely set the book down. (This rarely occurs though.)