Literature and Empathy - Free Essay Example

Introduction

Empathy includes the ability to consider another person's emotions and recognize these emotions as your own. It is because of these sentiments that people assist one another. While love, as described by Elliot in her article, is an affectionate desire for another individual. She discusses how writing should cultivate such feelings, including empathy, in her submission entitled On Seeing and Being Seen: The Contrast between Writing with Empathy and Writing with Passion. Consequently, Leslie Jamison, "Baggage Claims," depicted the connection between literature and empathy when she helped carry disabled woman baggage to a waiting plane. She believed it was the appropriate depiction of compassion. In that perspective, literature can elicit the reader's empathic and loving feelings in how the author expresses emotions in their narrations.

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Inspiration

Elliot starts her essay by describing the nature of love and the eye's pupils' actions when one is in love with another person. Besides, she contrasts the feeling of love with objects and notes that she fell in love with the letter when she first read Leanne Simpson's novel. Apart from human beings, one genuinely falls in love with different things; this illustration has been represented in how she connects with the text. "Leanne's" Island of Decolonial Love "was the novel she fell in love with. Elliot describes the good feeling that she had when other ladies read the text in the journal. However, what she needed to learn was not expressed in them. Elliot saw this as a big void for her to elicit her proposal. It is indicated that when she was reading the novel, both romantic and empathetic emotions were invoked in her.

Noteworthy, Leanne's novel was the first novel she had read willingly ever. She further states that, in all her life, she had never read another book by a female author. "Some feelings she had never felt before were evoked by the feeling she got from reading that novel, and she explains them as" intimate and personal revelatory. This discovery was in terms of intense feelings, mainly in terms of affection and compassion. Elliot further explains that the author has been able to enter her mind via a novel. This is true as she describes her reading experience using the following text, "She can see me." All this happened to her when she was twenty-five years old.

However, Elliot argues that writing with empathy is not enough in the work of the writer. She describes that in their novels, one has to show affectionate love to the group. She claims that one may have sympathy, but that one may also have colonial prejudice. This was apparent during the potlatch ritual, which took place in secret from 1885 to 1951 when the ceremony was turned into a racial battle. Many innocent people went on suffering as they were arrested and imprisoned in the name of an unrecognized potlatch ritual (Elliot, 2019). She also explains that the book was an inspiration to her path of writing. Through the poet, she could see a girl writing like herself, something she never saw in herself when growing up. Therefore, her mentor's book triggered some emotion in her that led her to the path of writing. These provoked feelings reflect intense emotions emanating from the text she was reading. She exemplifies that through love and compassion, inspiration can be extracted from the written content.

Her journey in writing is based on the popularity of her books. Publishers described her work with the content she made. Consequently, her published work on various subjects, including puberty and sex, influenced several people. However, as Elliot grew older, her literary taste began to evolve due to a changing environment. Her skepticism grew even though publishers were provoking her to be an indigenous girl who did not deserve to appear on the cover page of any literature work. Elliot believed in the diversity that fueled her search to express her writing to be published. She claims that variety should benefit those who wrote about whites and all those who wanted to write a work of art.

Narration

Leslie Jamison shows her empathy through writing while she was on a flight to Houston. She tells a touching of a woman she met while onboard at Houston airport. Jamison met a disabled woman who deserved her attention by helping her carry her bag to the lobby. It was Jamison's depiction of love and empathy. When Jamison shares her career path with the woman, she is happy, and she goes ahead, asking her whether they would spend a night together as they await departure the next day at 5:00 a.m. (Jamison, 2019).

Jamison's literature work indicates how one should leave empathy by helping the less fortunate in society. The next day he allows the lady to carry the bag to Houston airport as they await her wheelchair. This indicates that Jamison is loving and caring as she does not care even about knowing the woman's' social life. She says, "this is how we light stars, again and again: by showing with our ordinary, difficult bodies when other ordinary, difficult bodies might need us" (Jamison, 2019). Jamison portrays empathy as extending love perpetually beyond what we can see. Jamison discusses more her writing experience and the subjects she has prioritized. She says she's mostly writing about usual issues, like stories about rich boys. She was intrigued by these stories, as she did not want to linger on the nuances. As she grew older, her writing style adapted to reflect her age in the world of writing.

Literature plays a crucial role in discussing empathy across disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. In the recent past, the heart has been linked to literature as a central discussion for divergent fields. In Hammond's book, he argues that cultural and literary studies' complexity has been linked to literature and empathy through writing. ” The basic yet popular postulation that reading literature necessarily produces empathy and pro-social moral behavior greatly underestimates the complexity of reading, literature, empathy, morality, and society" (Hammond & Kim, 2014). The general understanding of empathy on how it relates to literature is one's feelings on others.

Different authors have emphasized diversification of kindness and love for one another regardless of origin. The conclusion is that a reader is emotionally transported in fiction would change someone's empathic feelings. The assumption that peoples' motives on empathic skills would be enhanced when a reader becomes emotionally transported. The connection between literature and empathy arises in the study where reading fiction affects someone's emotions. It could affect somebody negatively or positively, depending on feelings that would occur when someone reads a narrative or watching a movie.

In my perception, reading fiction books can be a critical value for the theory of the mind since a reader integrates with an author in a perception experiment in which the reader can claims a character's role freely with a certain distance. The detachment attitude allows contemplation to happen, which contributes to building up empathy. Consequently, literature will enable readers to discover different ethical standards that can widen consciousness and encompass other human beings.

Conclusion

Literature plays a crucial role in discussing empathy across disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. In the recent past, empathy has been linked to literature as a central discussion for divergent fields. However, if compassion were a simple neurological process, we would still have to differentiate the many possible kinds of empathy concerning different art forms. All the complexities of literary and cultural studies have yet to be brought to bear to understand the dynamics of literature and empathy indeed. Human beings value these mediums in several ways. For example, as stated in the essay, when she read a book, Elliot discovered her hidden talent in writing. The book's protagonist was a woman like her, and she was going through a similar period in her life. As a result, Elliot was able to identify with all this and later became a famous author herself. The book she was reading identified with her, and she thought like someone was talking to her. Thus, written materials can elicit empathetic feelings and other feelings.

References

Elliot, A. (2019). Being Seen: The Difference Between Writing With Empathy and Writing With Love. Retrieved from: https://roommagazine.com/writing/seeing-and-being-seen-differencebetween-writing-empathy-and-writing-love

Hammond, M., & Kim, S. (2014). Rethinking empathy through literature (1st ed., pp. 1-275). Routledge.

Jamison, L. (2019). Baggage Claims, Harper’s Magazine: Retrieved from
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/09/layover-story-leslie-jamison-make-itscream-make-it-burn/.