Brecht and Curious Incident

The above is because I don't really have a working title for this paper.  Or even a thesis quite yet.  This is just to get ideas down for later use.


A topic that really struck a chord with me from the second half of this class is empathy.  Specifically the empathy a reader feels for fictional characters.More often than not, the goal of an author of fiction is to get an audience invested in a work, and believable characters the reader can connect to is one of the best ways to do it. But what happens when a character within a work has problems empathizing with others, or an author intentionally creates a gulf between audience and characters?  Then you get The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, and the works of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. 


Definitions of empathy: 


Keen: Feeling what we believe to be the emotions of others.


Dictionary.com: 1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.  2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.


Wikipedia: the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another sentient or semi-sentient being.


Empathy can be distinguished from sympathy as a feeling with, rather than a feeling for.  "I feel what you feel" as opposed to "I feel a supportive emotion about your feelings"


Emotional contagion: "catching" a mood or a feeling


Summarize how narrative empathy might work, quotes from Keen: "Theory of Narrative Empathy," Zunshine "Why We Read Fiction"


Examples from common/popular literature & theater, distinguish between sympathy and empathy again.


Brecht, epic theater, alienation effect:  short bio, clarification of genre, examples of alienation techniques, Mother Courage and her Children


Alienation techniques: opening narrations, geste, learning in dialect performing in Hochdeutsch, stripping away the illusion of scenery, visible lights & wings, timing: set over 10+ years, coherence of story: scenes may be years apart and don't "flow" smoothly, characters distant in and of themselves, subject matter: war, death, "just good business."


The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: Autism, theory of mind, and empathy.  Are we alienated from Christopher when we read because of his trouble relating to other characters?  Is he alienated from other people in the same way Brecht desires his audience to be alienated?  


Facts versus emotion: Christopher and Brecht think about situations/death/tragedy instead of feeling about them.


Geste and Christopher's sheet of paper with the faces: complex expressions are hard to interpret.


Differences of scale: A week in 1 small town in England v. 10+ years in at least 3 countries.  One family and one dog versus 30 years of war and 3 dead children


How much Theory of Mind to work in?  Christopher has trouble mind-reading, does the alienation Brecht desires exclude it as well?  Are we supposed to be able to mind-read his characters?


Mother Courage: Is there something special about this play w/empathy because she has to hold herself distant from the world and the deaths of her children?  Doesn't empathize because she's shut herself off, rather than because her brain is wired that way.


Brainstorm complete.  Hope I can pull some good ideas & sensible structure from this.