Empathy

"Parvana was tired she wanted to sit in a classroom and be bored by a geography lesson. She
wanted to be with her friends and talk about homework and games and what to do
on school holidays. she didn't want to know any more about death or blood or pain."
(pg.130 The Breadwinner)

Empathy. 7 letters with a big meaning. This passage enables you to understand and share the feelings of others. in short it creates empathy. I absolutely love the Breadwinner because it is not just a few paragraphs that allow you to relate to Parvana in so many ways. Instead Deborah Ellis has managed to create this feeling throughout the whole book. There are so many passages like this one which makes me relate to Parvana, her thoughts, her feelings and the situations that she is in day after day in Afghanistan.

It is defiantly a good piece of writing when empathy is created. The question is how do authors make this happen? You need to create a character who your readers can connect to. Parvana is almost the same age as me and sometimes her personality reminds me of myself. For example she seems very determined which is like me. You also have to have to have situations which readers can either see themselves in or imagine themselves in. As an author the most important part of empathy is emotion. How does your character feel about certain things happening? Does your character feel many different emotions on a day to day basis? Are these the same as what your readers feel? These are all questions that go through an authors mind when they are forming a book which their audience will want to read because it is full of empathy.

My burqa

I hear the yells before I see the commotion. I round the corner and there they are. Three Taliban are beating a woman who is struggling to get free from their grasp. Two more soldiers are holding a man who is screaming and clutching a loaf of bread. He must have stolen it and is now paying the price. I close my eyes and pull my burqa around me. This is the one good thing about the light blue material that covers me from head to toe. You don't have to watch scenes like these, which happen on a daily basis on the streets of Afghanistan. You can just creep away without the screaming woman and children ever knowing you were ever there. You can't feel guilty about something that you didn't see can you? Anyway it's not like I could have helped. I'm a woman who can hardly see or walk because of the burqa.



Burqa. I hate that word more than anything else in the world, it conceals you, hides you, makes you feel worthless, it's the Taliban's way of saying that the world doesn't want to see you. It wasn't always like this though, I remember when I used to have many different clothes, when I could show my face. Different. The burqa has made me realize how important difference is. I miss seeing different faces in the market, different colours everywhere. Now it is just a mass of a few colours moving around. This makes me angry because it is one more thing to add to the list of what the Taliban has taken away from me. If I understood why they took my freedom and everything else away, maybe I would feel better about it. But I don't understand so I don't feel better, this is how things are and no matter how angry I am maybe I should just except it.