Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Secondary Characters As First-Person Narrators: A Study Of Empathy, Lily Walter

Senior Honors Theses

One of the greatest functions of literature is its ability to make readers attuned to the emotions of others. Specifically, literature promotes the practices of both empathy and sympathy. Point of view has a strong effect on how emotion is directed, and the secondary character as the first-person narrator functions as a literary device to direct the reader’s sympathy toward an unlikable, fatally-flawed protagonist. Secondary characters draw the reader close to the emotional world of the narrative through an others-orientation, their status as survivor, and their relationship to the protagonist. Ishmael in Moby Dick and Nick Carraway in The Great …