Empathy in Writing

Authors try to create a feeling of empathy in their readers by relating to emotions, detail and description, adjectives and situations you can relate to. She relates to the readers because she is a woman, and she went to Afghanistan to ask women about living there. Also she gives great detail and description about important events in the story, such as when Parvana is getting chased down the street by the Taliban or when she saw her father walking up the stairs of their apartment. She describes most of her sentences with descriptive adjectives which give you a clear picture of what is happening. She makes life in Afghanistan very real and scary, especially for women.

Authors usually use different words to make the reader feel empathy for a particular character. In this passage “Then, late one afternoon, Parvana came home from work to find two men gently helping her father up the steps to the apartment. He was alive. At least part of the nightmare was over.” I can picture this part very clearly, and am so happy for Parvana. This makes me feel empathy because she has had a rough day, and then her father has come home, so she can stop worrying about at least one member of her family.

In another book I read, “Distant Waves”, Jane the main character is separated from her sister and the love of her life. She was finally reunited with them. I felt happy for Jane, and felt her life was complete. In the Breadwinner, I felt the same when Parvana and her father were reunited. Both authors took very sad and lonely situations and turned it in to a happy situation. When I was reading both books I could see myself in Jane’s and Parvana’s shoes. It made me think what it would be like to be separated from my family.