Locating Amruta Patil's Graphic Novel Kari within the Silhouette of the Theory of Empathy

Abstract

Empathy being an interdisciplinary issue plays a significant role in art and aesthetics just like in psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, and so on. Literature enhances the reader’s qualities, social or moral, exposing him to hundreds of virtues and values. Graphic novel employing the dual medium, visual and verbal, has great potential to explore empathic abilities; as is often said, pictures are more powerful than words. Suzanne Keen, in the context of discussing narrative empathy of literature, observed this minutely and explained that traditional or canonical literature has the power to enhance one’s finer feelings with the help of narrative empathy. According to contemporary neuroscience, the reader or observer shows empathy due to the activation of the mirror neurons in his brain. And the reason for the activation of mirror neurons is the visualization of actions and incidents in the context of visual art such as painting, movie, and graphic novel, and internal visualization in the context of a text using only the verbal mode. The reader may experience a vicarious aesthetic encounter with a canonical text as well as with a graphic novel. This paper makes an empirical study of Amruta Patil’s graphic novel Kari, situating it within the different theoretical frameworks of narrative empathy.