Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Empathy

     Dictionary.com defines empathy as the intellectual identification with or various experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. A Student's Dictionary defines empathy as the ability to share the feelings of another person. I define empathy as a person's capacity to feel and understand the feelings and situations of others. No matter which one we use, though, one word will inevitably appear in each definition: feelings. Elizabeth Strout's 2008 novel, Olive Kitteridge, offers deep and in-depth descriptions of a unique and troubled cast characters and the feelings, traumatic internal conflicts, and attempted resolutions of each. Strout, a former citizen of Maine, harbors a deeply-rooted understanding of the need for empathy and, through the workings of her novel, attempts to share this understanding by painting the reader a portrait of the way she sees the world.  Throughout the first third of the novel, I can see that Strout believes that, in order to live life to the fullest, we must hold a certain consideration of the feelings of others, pursue feelings of empathy, and realize that each and every person suffers from their own pressing internal conflicts. Some of these conflicts we may not understand, but, the way Strout sees it, we must make every attempt to see life through everyone else's eyes. Even before reading this book, I had the same views as Strout--I believe that empathy overshadows all other qualities in value and importance. I believe that to fully understand another individual one must realize that, no matter how happy they may seem on the outside, each person will inevitably internally suffer from their own conflicts at some point in their lives. In the lives of the characters in Olive Kitteridge, I noticed that each character's suffering stems from one particular event or series of events, and then the internal confliction and memories of the pain come back to haunt the characters in their old age. In the case of pianist Angela O'Meara, for example, two particular events triggered this internal conflict: the loss of a love and the unwise and selfish decisions of an overbearing, overprotective mother. The entire section that Strout writes about her goes into detail about these particular events and how each affects her in her old age. Before offering this detail, however, Strout describes Angela's face and notes that "nothing harsh--it seemed--had happened to [it]" (49). She goes on to disprove this later in the chapter when discussing these traumatic events and the internal conflict following each. By showing the audience that things do not always appear as they seem, Strout advances her assertion that we tend to focus in only on our own struggles and ignore those of others, especially if others try to keep them hidden or do not feel comfortable discussing them. We may lose sight of the fact that each person fights their own unique battles with their own unique problems. The fact that we all constantly fight against these pent-up demons draws us all together and proves that we, along with the characters in the story, have more in common than it may seem. Likewise, as Olive lies on the bed after her son's wedding, she ponders the meaning of life and the sources of genuine happiness. She comes to the conclusion that something as simple as a "friendly clerk" or a waitress who "knows how you like your coffee" can brighten someone's day and make them temporarily forget whatever struggle they may currently face (69).  If Olive, the character who faces the most internal conflicts throughout the course of the story, can find happiness through these simple acts of kindness and friendliness, then Strout believes that we should make sure to treat everyone with kindness and take the time to get to know everyone because we do not know what kind of emotional trauma they may be facing. If we can do something simple to brighten their day, that act of kindness will remain in their memory and continue to brighten their seemingly dreary and dismal days to come.