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

Öz

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.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• 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

Öz

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.

Anahtar Kelimeler

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

Kaynakça

1. BATSON, C. Daniel (2009). “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related but Distinct Phenomena.” The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. eds. Jean Decety William Ickes. The MIT Press: Massachusetts. 3-16.
2. BLOOM, Harold (2002). Blooms Major Short Story Writers: Raymond Carver. Broomall: Chelsea House Publishers.
3. BONANNO, Georgia A. et al. (2008). “Sadness and Grief.” Handbook of Emotions. eds. Michael Lewis et al. New York: The Guilford Press. 797-810.
4. BOOTH, Wayne C. (1961). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press.
5. CARVER, Raymond (2015). Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories. New York: Vintage Contemporaries. Kindle Edition.
6. COPLAN, Amy and GOLDIE, Peter (2011). “Introduction.” Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. eds. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie. Oxford: Oxford university Press. xii-xlvii.
7. EISENBERG, Nancy and EGGUM, Natalie D. (2009). “Emphatic Responding: Sympathy and Personal Distress.” The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. eds. Jean Decety, William Ickes. The MIT Press: Massachusetts. 71-84.
8. FACKNITZ, Mark A. R. (1986). “‘The Calm,’ ‘A Small, Good Thing,’ and ‘Cathedral’: Raymond Carver And The Rediscovery of Human Worth.” Studies in Short Fiction 23 (3): 287-296. http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=77cb5e0d-397d-483b-9d18-791b770755d9%40sessionmgr101 [05.03.2017].

9. GEARHART, Michael Wm. (1989). “Breaking the Ties that Bind: Inarticulation in the Fiction of Raymond Carver”. Studies in Short Fiction 26 (4): 439-446. http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=77cb5e0d-397d-483b-9d18-791b770755d9%40sessionmgr101 [12.02.2017].
10. HAMMOND, Meghan Marie (2014). “Gertrude Stein and Empty Empathy.” Hammond, Meghan Marie and Kim, Sue J. “Introduction.” Rethinking Empathy through Literature (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature). eds. Meghan Marie Hammond and Sue J. Kim. Taylor and Francis. 212-224. Kindle Edition.
11. HAMMOND, Meghan Marie and KIM, Sue J. (2014). “Introduction.” Rethinking Empathy through Literature (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature). eds. Meghan Marie Hammond and Sue J. Kim. Taylor and Francis. 1-18. Kindle Edition.
12. HOGAN, Patric Colm (2011). What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. HOLLAND, Norman N. (2009). Literature and the Brain. Florida: The PsyArt Foundation.
14. KEEN, Suzanne (2007). Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
15. LAINSBURY, G. P. (2004). The Carver Chronotope: Inside the Life-World of Raymond carver’s Fiction. London: Routledge.
16. LYONS, William (1980). Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
17. MIALL, David S. (2011). “Emotions and the Structuring of Narrative Responses.” Poetics Today 32 (2): 323-348. http://poeticstoday.dukejournals.org/content/32/2/323.full.pdf+html [22.01.2017].
18. OATLEY, Keith (2004). Emotions: A Brief History. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
19. OATLEY, Keith (2012). The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotions in Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20. ROBINSON, Jenefer (2010). “Emotion and the Understanding of Narrative.” A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature. eds. Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost. Chichester: Willey-Blackwell. 71-45.
21. ROSZAK, Suzanne (2014). “Conformist Culture and the Failures of Empathy Reading James Baldwin and Patricia Highsmith.” Rethinking Empathy through Literature (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature). eds. Meghan Marie Hammond and Sue J. Kim. Taylor and Francis. 150-161. Kindle Edition.
22. RUSSELL, Richard Rankin (2016). “Reading Conor McPherson’s The Weir through Raymond Carver’s “A Small Good Thing”.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, And Reviews 29 (3): 194-195. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2016.1217388 [08.10.2017].
23. SKLAR, Howard (2013). The Art of Sympathy in Fiction: Forms of Ethical and Emotional Persuasion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
24. SOLOMON, Robert (2008). “The Philosophy of Emotions.” Handbook of Emotions. eds. Michael Lewis et al. New York: The Guilford Press. 3-16.
25. STYHRE, Alexander (2017). “Raymond Carver and the voices of everyday life.” Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal 12 (3): 178-189. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-10-2016-1427 [10.10.2017].