Activation of Empathy Feelings in Raymond Carver’s A Small, Good Thing

Year 2017, Issue: 38, 265 - 278, 18.12.2017

Karam Nayabpour

https://doi.org/10.21497/sefad.377103

Abstract

Raymond Carver’s A Small, Good
Thing portrays affective and cognitive empathy feelings between the
characters. The narrative presents affective discourse in two situations. The
protagonist Ann’s empathy with her husband and with a Negro family enables her
to communicate with them through sharing their mental states. Likewise, the
narrative represents two situations in which cognitive empathy is generated.
Dr. Francis’s awareness about Ann’s mental state alleviates her suffering.
Additionally, when, at the narrative’s end, Ann and her husband tell the baker
the news of their son’s death and he tells them his own childless life story,
they mutually show cognitive empathy toward each other through identification
of their mental states. My essay argues that engagement with evoked cognitive
and affective empathy feelings between the characters in Carver’s story is
likely to generate narrative reader’s cognitive empathy. Carver’s narrative has
the potential to elicit a reader’s cognitive empathy through manipulation of
the narrative perspective and representation of a familiar emotion, sadness
evoked by death, as well as anthropomorphic or human-like reactions to this
emotion.

Keywords

Narrative and emotion, empathy (affective and cognitive) / sympathy, reader, A Small, Good Thing, Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver’in A Small, Good Thing Adlı Hikâyesinde Eşduyum Duygularının Etkinleştirilmesi

Abstract

Raymond Carver’ın A Small,
Good Thing adlı hikâyesi, karakterler arasındaki duyuşsal ve bilişsel
empati duygularını betimler. Anlatı, duyuşsal söylemi iki durumda sunar.
Öykünün baş kişisi olan Ann'in kocasıyla ve bir Zenci aileyle olan
empatisi,  zihinsel durumlarını
paylaşarak, onlarla iletişim kurmasını sağlar. Aynı biçimde anlatı, iki başka
durumda da, bilişsel empatinin kurulmasını ortaya koyar. Dr. Francis’in Ann'in
acı çeken zihinsel durumu hakkındaki farkındalığı, Ann’in acısını hafifletir.
Bunun yanında, anlatı sonunda Ann ve kocası fırıncıya kendi oğullarının ölüm
haberini verip, fırıncının da onlara kendi çocuksuz yaşam öyküsünü
anlattığında, zihinsel durumlarını anlama ve farketme yoluyla birbirleri ile
bilişsel empati kurarlar. Bu yazıda, Carver'ın öyküsündeki karakterler arasında
tetiklenmiş bilişsel ve duyuşsal empati duygularıyla etkileşim kurmanın, anlatı
okuyucusununda bilişsel empati oluşturacağı öne sürülmektedir. Carver'ın
öyküsü, anlatı perspektifinin manipüle edilmesi ve tanıdık bir duygunun—ölümle
tetiklenen hüzünlenmenin—sunulması yoluyla, okuyucunun anlatıdaki duruma karşı
insani tepkilerini uyandırıp, onun karakterlerle bilişsel empati kurmasını
sağlama potansiyeline sahiptir.

Keywords

Anlatı ve duygu, empati (duyuşsal ve bilişsel) / sempati, okuyucu, A Small, Good Thing, Raymond Carver

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