“Write down phrases that you find abhorrent. Words you would never say to yourself.”
The students looked surprised, but they cooperated. They knew I wouldn’t collect this exercise – what they wrote would be private unless they chose to share it. All they were asked to do was participate.
They wrote down some words in silence. So far, so good. We had not yet reached this difficult request. He had 10 minutes to write a first-person monologue uttered by a fictional character who said something upsetting. This part usually causes nervous stares. In such cases, I remind my students that what they say does not represent them, and that speaking as if you are someone else is a basic skill for fiction writers. Masu. As I explain, this problematic statement needs to appear in the monologue, it should not be downplayed, and students should not feel the need to excuse it or explain it away. All you need is a moment somewhere in the monologue, even a fleeting phrase, that makes you empathize with the speaker. Perhaps she is sick because she is worried about her sick grandson. Perhaps he is obsessed with the love he missed. Maybe she’s losing sleep thinking about how to keep her business running and her employees paid. Done correctly, this exercise provides a one-two punch of disgust for a behavior or worldview and recognition of our common humanity.
For over 20 years, I have taught various versions of this novel writing exercise. I’ve used it in college, middle school, and private workshops. With children aged 7 and 70. But in recent years, this practice, and the tolerance for imaginative leaps it was designed to teach, has narrowed to a pinprick. As our nation’s public conversations have grown angrier, I’ve noticed that students’ approaches to exercises have become more fragile, whether they lean to the right or left.
I think that with each passing semester, the scope of our empathy becomes extremely narrow, and we no longer see the full picture of our fellow human beings. Maybe it’s so contentious or so painful that people lock themselves in their own silos. I certainly felt myself being pulled inward in the same way. Diving into someone else’s perspective can feel impossible.
However, it is the writer’s job to make a leap forward, and there is no point in doing it half-heartedly. Good fiction performs magical tricks of absurd force. It makes us care. We may cry, laugh, or have our hearts beat in response to the suffering of invented characters like Ahab and Amaranta, Sethe and Stevens, Zooey and Zorba. As readers, we become obsessed with these people, but that’s quite different from agreeing with or even liking them. In the best literature, characters are so vivid, complex, contradictory, and mind-boggling that we follow them far beyond our own preconceptions. Sometimes they don’t come back.
Unflinching empathy is the muscle this lesson is designed to exercise, a prerequisite for literature strong enough to grapple with the real world. On this page you can find signs of humanity. Once you leave the page, you’ll start conversations with some of the strangest people who will teach you to thrive with differences. It can even influence the life-or-death choices we instinctively make in times of crisis. This kind of empathy has nothing to do with being kind. And it’s not for the faint of heart.
Even within the safe confines of the page, it’s tempting to sidestep the challenge of empathy and instead demonize villains and idealize heroes, but that’s when art’s moral compass gets stuck. It’s time. In that case, we would be acting blindly. We know what bad people are like and are confident that they are not us, so we don’t risk making mistakes.
In contrast, our best writers portray humans in complete complexity. This is what Gish Jen does in her short story “Who’s Irish?” Rohinton Mistry in the novel “A Fine Balance.” These writers reveal the inner world of offending characters line by line, but that is not the same as forgiving them. No one will ever say that Toni Morrison forgives her role as Cholly Breedlove, who rapes his girlfriend’s daughter in The Bluest Eye. What Prime Minister Scott Morrison has achieved instead is the boldest act of moral and emotional understanding I have ever seen on these pages.
The offending words that students scribble during classroom exercises may be personal (You’ll never be a writer…You’re ugly…) or religious or political. When one student wrote a sentence condemning abortion, another student across the table wrote a sentence defending it. Sometimes stereotypes and slurs exist. Whatever the student chooses to work on. Of course, it’s scary to step into the shoes of someone who says or does something that makes us uncomfortable. When writing these monologues, my graduate students, who know what “first person” means, would evade writing in third person. Instead of “I said,” use a distanced “he said.”
But if you can live up to the challenge of first-person perspective, sometimes things can happen. They are upset and eager to expand on what they have written. As I was sorting through my notebooks, I looked up and saw a student still lingering after school with a wary expression on his face, saying that he had felt what he was supposed to feel through this exercise.
Over the years, as my students’ voices became more political and jargon (deplorables…snowflakes…) replaced words of personal experience, I adapted this exercise. I did. My students don’t have to hear other students’ disturbing comments or fear being judged for themselves because I’m worried that I’ve been too optimistic about potential pitfalls. As in, it was completely silenced. Anyone who would like to share their monologue with me is welcome to stay after class instead of reading it aloud to the group. After that I added another warning. If your annoying remark is so offensive that you can’t imagine the person making it to be a complete human being, choose a less annoying remark. Next, we narrowed down the parameters. Does not include politics. The pandemic’s virtual classes have made it difficult to take risks. We have moved the exercises further into the semester to help students feel more at ease.
After one session, students remained in the virtual conference room. She was unable to incorporate empathy into a monologue about a character who hated politics. Her omission bothered her. I was impressed by her honesty. She created a caricature and recognized it. Most of us don’t.
I have quietly completed this exercise with my students for years. There are days when there is no spark. But when it works, the experience brings anxiety. In the end, it’s not the empathy itself that’s difficult, but what follows. That is, the devastating notion that the people whose fear, joy, and humor I value so highly may be indifferent to all the concepts of the world that I hold dear.
Then the 10 minute timer went off and I returned to my classroom work. I was disturbed by the size of the world, but I was more concerned about the people in it. I trust that curiosity. What better choice could there be? And in the sanctuary of the classroom, I continue to challenge myself while passing on what I have learned from literature. It’s a small, durable piece of magic that anyone can do, as long as they’re willing to take the risk.