Are You Feeling It?
by Elizabeth Solar
Although we were separated by time, geography and circumstance, my young adolescent self felt very much connected to Anne Frank.
Through the turbulence of puberty, a clash with over-protective parents, and my first crush, Anne was right there with me. Like me, she pondered the nature of the world, and her place in it, as well as challenged the adults in her life.
From the safety of my lilac bedroom walls in a Boston suburb, I wept as the smart, funny and brave girl holed away in a secret annex was captured, and faced unknown cruelty until her death within the walls of Bergen-Belson. How could this happen to Anne, the girl who became my friend?
The Diary of Anne Frank took me to uncharted places, invited me into a world I had read about in generalities through history books. This pivotal experience of reading her diary was personal. It informed my worldview, and set me on a path: To cheer the underdog, provide a voice for those who cannot (sometimes literally) use their own, to champion the ‘other.’ Her words -- her story -- were as instructive, if not more so, about human decency as 12 years of parochial education.
Stories have the power to move us, to provoke thought, feeling, action, and make us feel less alone. They might make us a little more empathetic, especially works of literary fiction. (My citation of Anne Frank’s diary may be an exception, but I’ll stand by my younger self on this one.)
Don’t just take the word of this right-brainer. Left-brain science backs me up on this.
Psychologists at the University of Toronto conducted a study that concluded. “The more fiction people read, the better they empathized.” The 2006 study controlled for various traits, including age, gender, IQ, and personality type. It also assessed a person’s“tendency to be transported by a narrative” – the feeling you experience the story from the inside, as a participant, not as an outside observer.
They also administered an objective empathy test to measure how long-term exposure to fiction influenced a person’s ability to intuit emotions and intentions of people in the real world. In most cases, readers with higher levels of empathy were more likely to help other people, live richer lives, and enjoy extensive social networks. Rather than the stereotypical recluse or wallflower, readers are social butterflies.
A 2013 study published in the journal Science confirmed reading literary fiction - as opposed to genre fiction like horror, or romance - increases the ability to detect and understand other people’s emotions. Readers of literary fiction are provided an opportunity to speculate motives and reflect on emotions often embedded in subtext, which may enhance our emotional intelligence.
This brings me to why reading, especially reading literary fiction may be a catalyst for our own brand of activism. If we can be transported, perhaps transformed by a high stakes situation in an imaginary world, it’s a short walk to being moved in the world of our own reality. And that nudge just may lead to doing something about it.
Is it coincidence there is a revival of interest in stories like A Handmaid’s
Tale, 1984, or Fahrenheit 451, during a surge in social outreach, and growing resistance against proposed government policies perceived as unfair, or inhumane?
Is it coincidence the same young girl who loved Anne Frank found a friend, and encouragement in the intrepid Jo March, the Little Woman who so wanted to be a writer, and claim her stake in the world?
