Intersections of Empathy and Characters

(Photo by Dreaming Ace)

Yesterday evening was the Three Avenues Bookshop book club meeting for The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters. In my small group, we had an interesting debate about whether we should always be able to have empathy for characters.

Now, I think part of the debate was because we were using the words in different ways, but for this blog post, I am going with "Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another," and I find that personally, I can't always "understand" the feelings of others.

Note: There will be spoilers for The Berry Pickers.

Let us start with a summary:

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

So, as I figured out by simply reading the summary, Ruthie and Norma are the same character. The debate at book club was around whether we all could feel "empathy" towards the woman who kidnapped Ruthie and raised her as Norma.

I found that I could "empathize" with the bad choice of kidnapping Ruthie because the woman had experienced multiple miscarriages, stillbirths, etc. and clearly was experiencing an acute mental health struggle when she made the choice to take Ruthie.

I can understand feeling big feelings and having meltdowns or shutdowns. I can also understand characters who express those big feelings in unhealthy ways, such as by turning to alcohol or drugs. So while I 100% disagree with the kidnapping, I can understand, on some level, why the woman did it.

But I lost my ability to understand the feelings of the woman (and the woman's husband, who supported her by having a birth certificate created and moving the family to another town where no one knew them and would question the appearance of this 4-year-old).

I fundamentally can't understand why the woman, her husband, or others who later knew what happened didn't wake up the metaphoric next morning and go, "OMG, WTF, this is wrong. We must rectify the situation." I truly can't understand why no one went; the woman made a mistake, and while we understand she is suffering and is "fragile," she can't kidnap a kid in response.

I think some of my reasons for not being able to empathize with the woman after the initial kidnapping include:

• Historical Baggage: I am aware of some of the ways that religious and state-sponsored schools have historically "kidnapped" indigenous children, stealing their culture and identity and horrifyingly causing the death of many of these children. In a different context, I am also aware of how, during slavery, children were often taken from mothers and sold. So for me, kidnapping kids is a clear wrong.

• Distance From The Issue: On one hand, I have never wanted to have kids and never plan on having kids in the future so I struggle to understand the impact of miscarriages and stillbirths on the woman. On the other hand, I know of several people who have been open on social media about miscarriages, stillbirths etc., and while each has made different choices, none of them Kidnapped a child. So I would say I cannot understand the kidnapping, even if I can understand how the woman would have been experiencing big feelings when she did so.

• Other Character Development: In the book, we get to really see the consequences of the choice to kidnap the kid, while we don't get inside the kidnappers head to the same degree, so personally, I am able to understand and empathize with the other characters, especially Joe, and the guilt he felt at feeling like he was the one to lose his sister, even though he was 6 years old at the time, impacted all his future choices. Seeing all the ripples of the woman's choice makes it harder for me to understand her choice, even though I know the woman did not see those ripples.

• The Woman's Own Lack Of Empathy: In addition, clearly, the woman understood the impact of losing a child to miscarriage or stillbirth, so I can't fundamentally understand why the woman could not then understand how having your four-year-old child stolen would impact you in a different but related way.

• Different Standards For Realistic Stories Than For Other Fiction: This story is "realistic" and feels like it could have happened, which I think oddly makes it harder for me to empathize. I think since it is realistic, I struggle to understand why the choice was made. When characters are in worlds filled with superheroes, aliens, anthropomorphic personification, gods, etc., I can understand and buy the conceit that they didn't see better options available when they made their choices and can't say I would have done it differently. In this case, I know there were other options, so I don't understand why those other options were not used.

So while I know it is important to be able to empathize with people in general, and there are times when I understand why someone made the choice they did even if I would never make that choice myself, I know I can't always empathize with others. I can't always feel what others feel. I don't always relate to other people or to the world in the same way others do. And so personally, I don't think we can all empathize with all characters at all times.