Riyukta Raghunath

UNRESOLVED ENDING- HOW EMPATHY PLAYS A ROLE.

Abstract

In this essay, I will focus on the relationship between empathy and reader’s choice of ending.

In order to do this I have chosen two narrative texts - Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version

(1997) and Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island (2003), both of which have open endings. “The

most commonly nominated feature of narrative fiction to be associated with empathy is

character identification” (Keen 2006: 214) and so in this essay the word ‘empathy’ is used in

the context of empathy for fictional characters within the text.

The two novels used in this case deal with Alzheimer’s disease and Schizophrenia as being

central to the plot, thus introducing empathy for the character. Since these are disclosed only

towards the end I will analyse whether empathy for the character undergoes any strong

change and whether or not this affects the reader’s choice of ending.

Since empathy is an emotional process and has no linguistic marker, I have chosen extracts1

that struck me as triggers for empathy and labelled them ‘implicit markers’. I have also

mentioned how the film adaptations of these narrative texts influence the reader.

1 Owing to the word limit I have included only what I have thought relevant and important to my analysis of empathy in resolving the

ending.

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BARNEY’S VERSION- MORDECAI RICHLER and SHUTTER

ISLAND- DENNIS LEHANE

The opening lines of Mordecai Richler’s ‘Barney’s Version’ have teleological significance, in

the sense that they convey to the reader the purpose of the story in the book. (Palmer 2004).

Barney is perturbed by McIver's autobiography and the opening lines can be seen as Barney's

appeal to the reader for empathy. This Mordecai Richler novel is written as if it were an

autobiography of the protagonist, Barney Panofsky:

“Terry’s the spur. The splinter under my fingernail. To come clean I am starting on this

shambles that is the true story of my wasted life (violating a solemn pledge, scribbling a first

book at my advanced age), as a riposte to the scurrilous charges Terry McIver has made in

his forthcoming autobiography: about me, my three wives a.k.a Barney Panofsky’s troika, the

nature of my friendship with Boogie, and, of course, the scandal I will carry to my grave like

a humpback.”

[Barney’s Version 1997: 1]

On reading these lines, we as readers reconstruct Barney Panofsky’s fictional frame of mind

and in the process we also reconstruct his rival, Terry McIver’s “fictional mind” (Palmer

2004). This novel is written in the first person and so has a fixed focalisation, that of the

narrator, Barney. We know that Terry McIver, through his autobiography, has slandered

Barney and now Barney has taken it upon himself to clear his name.

According to the “willing construction of disbelief” (Prentice and Gerrig 1999, Prentice et al.

1997), readers initially accept and believe all the information that a narrative text furnishes

and an effort must be made to disbelieve anything unless of course the narrative text prompts

you to do so. On reconstructing Barney’s “fictional mind” (Palmer 2004), the readers are able

to identify Barney’s motive behind writing this autobiography and his use of “...is the true

story of my wasted life...”2 further coerces the reader to believe him.

2 [Barney’s Version 1997: 1]

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The reader constantly sees footnotes that contain corrections of factual errors in the main

body of the narrative. Barney has his harmless moments of memory lapse, when he forgets

the name of the instrument that is used to strain spaghetti (he rings up his son for the name- a

colander) and so on. While reading the novel the reader does not give much thought to these

spurts of memory lapse or the footnotes as they are aware that the novel is almost like a

manuscript of Barney’s autobiography and the plausible explanation is that on re-reading it,

the errors (owing to his “advanced age”) were corrected (in the form of footnotes maybe by

the editor).

Barney’s failing memory, innocuous at the beginning worsens as we progress through the

novel and towards the end Barney is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“Clinical Features:

The first sign is mild memory loss. A housewife mislays her sewing, burns the toast, and

forgets one or two items while shopping. A professional man or woman forgets

appointments or disconcertingly hesitates in the middle of a lecture, unable to find the

appropriate word. No more serious failure may be observed for a year or longer because of

the slow progress of the disease...

Morty, it’s me. Sorry to call you at home. Have you got a minute?

Yeah, sure. Just let me turn down the TV.

It’s Alzheimer’s, isn’t it?”

[Barney’s Version 1997: 389]

This refurbished knowledge of Barney suffering from Alzheimer’s disease prompts the reader

to question the protagonist’s (narrator’s) reliability and the story being narrated so far.

Another narrative text that creates a similar stylistic effect is Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island.

Unlike the Mordecai Richler novel, this is a third person narrative, i.e., employs the use of an

extradiegetic narrator. The narrative text opens with a prologue that tells us it is journal of Dr

Sheenan, the rest of the story is narrated to us by him. Shutter Island is primarily the story of

the protagonist, Teddy, who accompanied by another US marshal, Chuck, comes to an island

that is known as ‘Shutter Island’. This island is home to the criminally insane, and the two

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marshals (Teddy and Chuck) have been sent to the island to investigate the case of a missing

patient.

The story world in this novel creates an unsettling reading experience from the beginning.

This is presumably owing to the setting- mental asylum, patients, and the content- the story of

Rachael Solando having murdered her three children by drowning them in a lake, Teddy’s

wife who died in a fire and the hidden truth about Shutter Island conducting experiments on

patients with psychotropic drugs. The novel is also interspersed with graphic descriptions of

the World War II, which adds to the sense of paranoia that emerges from it.

Similar to Barney’s Version, it is at the end of the novel that the reader acquires information

about Teddy being a schizophrenic, leading the reader to question the details of the story

world thus suspecting the protagonist’s reliability.

EMPATHISING WITH THE UNRELIABLE PROTAGONIST

Narrative theorists and critics have pointed out a set of narrative techniques like “first person

narration and the interior representation of characters’ consciousness and emotional states - as

devices supporting character identification” (Keen 2006:213). These narrative techniques are

said to create empathetic responses and experiences. While Barney’s Version is a first person

narrative dealing with the emotional states of characters and their consciousness, Shutter

Island, though a third person narrative, also deals with emotional states and character

consciousness. What brings the reader closer to both the narrative texts is that they are written

in the form of an autobiography and a journal respectively. Lodge acknowledges the view

that by modelling a narrative text on “the discourse of personal witness: the confession, the

diary, the autobiography, the memoir, the disposition”, it creates “an illusion of reality”

(Lodge 2002).

Character identification is seen as a form of empathy that occurs in the reader as a

consequence of reading (Keen 2006). In the present case, the reader might begin to

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empathise further (or identify)3 with the character of Barney Panofsky only after he is

diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Keen suggests that this is likely because negative

situations (death, pain, suffering, and illness) evoke empathy more readily in a reader as

opposed to positive situations (achievement, success, joy) (Keen 2006).

Barney’s Version is Barney’s attempt to reflect on the various aspects of his way of life - his

innermost insecurities, failures, the humiliations and also his vanities. As we enter Barney’s

world, the reader very often encounters Barney’s creation of a “galaxy of ebullient, perverse,

and obsessed characters, all of whom are portrayed as posing an imminent threat to his shady

and irreverent personality”. The reader also learns the possibility that Barney drove his first

wife to commit suicide. (Branko, 1999:149) Up until the diagnosis in the novel, we feel no

strong sense of empathy4 towards Barney except of course when he talks of Miriam, his third

wife and the only one he truly ever loved. “Miriam Miriam, my heart’s desire”5, this sentence

reoccurs in the novel every time Barney talks of his third wife. Barney seems indifferent to

everyone in his life except to his children and his third wife, Miriam (Brzezinski6, 1999: 105).

The novel is divided into three parts- the three Panofsky wives. Miriam is his third wife and

hence rightly belongs to the last part of the novel; nevertheless, she appears constantly

throughout the novel. Despite how despicable Barney seems through most of the book, he can

be hysterical, but the love he has for Miriam and his children breathes a little kindness into

his character. Barney has only loved Miriam truly and this seems rather obvious to the reader

because the reader is able to contrast his feelings for Miriam with that of his other wives.

The fictional autobiography ends on a cheerless note, where Barney picks up the phone to

call Miriam but realises he can’t remember her number. Throughout the novel we see and feel

Barney’s love for Miriam, and to a reader that empathises with those feelings, this can be

quite anguishing. In the afterword written by his son, Mike, you learn more about Barney

post diagnosis. Owing to the narrative situation, wherein Barney knows that the disease is

going to eat him wholly very soon he decides to tie the loose ends of his life.

Twenty-five thousand dollars for Benoit O’Neil, who had been caretaker of the cottage in the

Laurentians for years.

3 The most commonly nominated feature of narrative fiction to be associated with empathy is character identification” (Keen 2006).4 It is not that there is no empathy, but it is after his diagnosis that the empathy is heightened. 5 [Barney’s Version 1997: 19]6 Brzezinski, Steve, Antioch Review (57:1) Winter 1999, 104-105.

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The estate was obliged to settle John Hughes-McNoughton’s monthly bar bill at Dink’s for as

long as he lived.

There was also a surprise, considering how often our father joked about schvartzes, a two-

hundred-thousand dollar trust fund was to be set up to establish a scholarship at McGill

University for a black student who excelled in arts; the aforesaid scholarship in memory of

Ismail Ben Yussef a.ka. Cedric Richardson, who had died of cancer on November 18, 1995.

[Barney’s Version 1997: 399]

He was to be buried, as he had already arranged, in the Protestant cemetery at the foot of

Mont Groulx, but there should be a Star of David on his stone, and the adjoining plot had

been reserved for Miriam.

[Barney’s Version 1997: 400]

These extracts that appear in the afterword written by Mike, paint a very different picture of

Barney and strikes me as an implicit marker for empathy. “When you are facing the end,

everything that’s not real is stripped away. You’re the most real you’ll ever be, more real than

you have ever been before”. (Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta7). This is a common belief

and can be seen even in ‘Barney’s Version’. Barney’s dislike for Cedric Richardson, his

mocking of schvartzes8 is very evident throughout the novel and yet he decides to set up a

two-hundred-thousand dollar trust fund dedicated to Cedric.

His gestures, as seen in the above extracts, evoke a strong sense of empathy, especially

character empathy. My hypothesis is that if the reader does not in fact empathise with Barney

during the course of the story, he/she most certainly does when Barney is diagnosed and more

so, when he/she learns about Barney in the afterword narrated by Mike. This kind of

character empathy evokes a certain level of reader involvement.

Also crucial to the story is the disappearance of Barney’s friend Boogie. Barney’s second

wife is caught having an affair with his friend, Boogie, at their cottage. The second Mrs

Panofsky drives away in rage leaving Barney and Boogie argue over the issue. In the course

of this argument Barney threatens to kill Boogie with his gun. Boogie disregards the threat

7 Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta, authors of Noch Mal LebenVor DemTod, 2007, available on http://www.horizonresearch.org/Uploads/RELATIVES_BROCHURE.pdf8 yiddish slur against a black person (available on http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schvartze)

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and insists on going for a swim over Barney’s warning that he is too drunk to swim. Boogie

ignores Barney’s plea and proceeds towards the lake and never returns.

Boogie plunging into the lake was the last I ever saw of him. I’m willing to swear on the

heads of my grandchildren that was exactly how it happened, but he has disappeared more

than once before, and I have never given up hope. Not a day passes when I don’t think there

will be a postcard from Tashkent or Havana or Addis Ababa. Or, still better, that he will

sneak up behind me at Dink’s and say ‘Boo’.

[Barney’s Version 1997: 292]

During his interrogation, when inspector O’Hearne asks him about Boogie, sarcastically,

Barney tells him that he shot Boogie through the heart. This is used as Barney’s acceptance

of murder and following this he is also arrested and convicted for murder but later acquitted

as no body is found (though many people remain convinced of his guilt).

1. “Did you really murder that guy all those years ago?

I think not, but some days I’m not so sure. No, I didn’t. I couldn’t have.”

[Barney’s Version 1997: 379]

2. “You’re too drunk to swim you damn fool.

You come too.

Instead, I fired a shot well over his head. But I only raised my gun at the last minute.

So If I wasn’t guilty of murder in face, I was by intent. “

[Barney’s Version 1997: 383]

As readers we are led to believe that Barney has murdered Boogie. Barney playfully fires a

warning shot over Boogie’s head and the last we see of Boogie in the novel is him tumbling

into the water. His explanation to O’Hearne coupled with the above examples (1 and 2) leave

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the reader with little choice but to believe that Barney has murdered his friend. The murder

has a motive- Barney’s second wife is having an affair with Boogie but what we also know is

that Barney was never in love with the second Mrs Panofsky and that since the night of his

wedding to the her (the first time he met Miriam), he has been in love with Miriam and has

been wanting to divorce his wife and marry Miriam. In his conversation with Boogie after the

incident at the cottage he asks Boogie to be his co-respondent for the divorce. It can be

gathered that though he had a motive, it did not mean much because he was never in love

with the second Mrs Panofsky and in fact he was happy she was having an affair because that

alluded to an effortless divorce. In spite of all this the narrator’s unreliability as seen in

example 1 does not help the reader to make a decision.

The mystery behind Boogie’s death9 is given a plausible ending in the novel. Mike, in the

final page, while in the porch of Barney’s cottage, sees a water bomber lowering on to the

lake, scooping gallons of water and dumping it on the mountain. It is left to the readers to fill

the gap and choose what we believe to be the cause of Boogie’s death (Gavins 2007; Emmott

1998; Ryan 1998; Gerrig and Rapp 2004).

Owing to the third person narration in Dennis Lehane’s novel, the reader is not invited to

form a close relationship with the main character as in the case of Barney’s Version, which is

a first person narrative but nonetheless it does not affect the empathetic experience because of

the content and situation that the novel poses to the reader (Keen 2006). As the text

progresses the reader empathises with the characters for several reasons. To begin with, his

love for his wife, Dolores Chanal, who he believes died in a fire. He dreamed of her

repeatedly and every little object would somehow trigger a memory of her.

“Dolores had been dead for two years, but she came to life at night in his dreams, and he

sometimes went full minutes into a new morning thinking she was out in the kitchen or taking

her coffee on the front stoop of their apartment on Buttonwood. This was a cruel trick of the

mind, yes, but Teddy had long ago accepted the logic of it-waking after all was an almost

natal state. You surfaced without a history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling the

past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.”

[Shutter Island 2003: 36]

9 In the afterword we learn that boogie is indeed dead and his bones are found scattered on the crest of Mount Groulx.

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This extract strikes me as an implicit marker for empathy not only because of the content but

also because of the language that is used. There is a connection between language and

emotions and as the story progresses you empathise more owing to the situation we believe

Teddy is caught up in and the language that is used to explain it (Kovecses 1990). Readers

identify with Teddy’s fear and wish for Teddy to escape from the island. When we reach the

final chapter we encounter the plot twist that goes completely against reader expectation.

The reader feels as though he/she is caught in a web of deceit, not knowing whom to believe.

If the reader empathises with the character of Teddy, he/she wishes that Teddy is not a patient

and as per his claims in the narrative text, he is speaking the truth. The reader hopes that

everyone else around Teddy is lying. Similar to the situation in Barney’s Version, our choice

of reality depends on how much we empathise with the character of Teddy. As the novel

moves ahead from this point, the reader is left with no choice but to believe that Teddy is

indeed a patient at Shutter Island. At this moment the reader almost feels as though the rug

has been pulled from under their feet. On my reading of the novel, I continued hoping that

Teddy’s fictional reality was the true reality.

The narrative technique is such that throughout the novel, you proceed with the main

character on his journey thus being persuaded to believe his thoughts and views only. Since

the story world is that of mental illnesses, the reader not only revels in the horror but also

empathises with the disturbed characters. When at the end of the novel, it is revealed that

Teddy is himself a patient at Shutter Island, the reader empathises with him further. Alan

Palmer’s “theory of mind” can be used to understand Teddy’s frame of mind (Palmer 2004).

Rachael Solando, the missing patient according to Teddy is purely fictitious. What is really

interesting here is how at the end of the novel we learn that Rachel Solando is in fact his wife

Dolores Chanal. Through the novel we see how he feels about the patient Rachel Solando,

which only goes to show us how he really feels about the his wife, Dolores Chanal. All these

serve as implicit markers embedded within the text for character empathy- a reader is moved

by Teddy’s present state of affairs, his love for his wife, the need to create a fictitious life in

order to escape reality, and of course the recurrent dreams.

“My name is Edward Daniels.’ ‘No.’ Cawley shook his head with an air of weary defeat.

‘Your name is Andrew Laeddis. You did a terrible thing, and you can’t forgive yourself, no

matter what, so you playact. You’ve created a dense, complex narrative structure in which

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you are the hero, Andrew. You convince yourself you’re still a U.S. marshal and you’re here

on a case. And you’ve uncovered a conspiracy, which means that anything we tell you to the

contrary plays into your fantasy that we’re conspiring against you. And maybe we could let

that go, let you live in your fantasy world. I’d like that. If you were harmless, I’d like that a

lot. But you’re violent, you’re very violent. And because of your military and law enforcement

training, you’re too good at it. You’re the most dangerous patient we have here. We can’t

contain you. It’s been decided- look at me.”

[Shutter Island 2003: 371]

The novel after what is called its ‘plot twist’ further leaves the reader with an unresolved end.

The reader is previously warned about Andrew/Teddy’s mental health and the doctors’ failed

attempts to cure him.

“It’s been decided that if we can’t bring you back to sanity- now, right now- permanent

measures will be taken to make sure you never hurt anyone again. Do you understand what

I’m saying to you?”

[Shutter Island 2003: 371]

The readers’ expectation at this point is that Teddy is brought back to sanity for the reader is

aware that if this is not the case, Teddy will have to undergo a lobotomy10. It seems to the

reader that Teddy has accepted the reality because when he is examined by Dr Cawley,

Teddy accepts that he is in fact Andrew Laeddis and that he invented this story as way of

escaping from reality (the truth).

10 Lobotomy, also called prefrontal leukotomy,  surgical procedure in which the nerve pathways in a lobe or lobes of the brain are severed from those in other areas. The procedure formerly was used as a radical therapeutic measure to help grossly disturbed patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other mental illnesses- Encyclopaedia- Britannica. Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/345502/lobotomy

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BARNEY’S VERSION AND SHUTTER ISLAND- AN ANALYSIS

In Barney’s Version, the readers’ knowledge is not delayed, in fact they learn about Barney’s

illness at the same point that Barney does himself. Our mental picture or text world, at this

point, goes through what is called ‘world repair’ (Gavins 2007). All the footnotes

encountered through the novel begin to make sense at this point. World repair takes place in

the form of questioning the reliability of the narrator. The readers are not required to abandon

their existing text world but only to make corrections (the footnotes and the memory lapses

make sense now and the narrator is conceptualised as unreliable). In Dennis Lehane’s Shutter

Island, it is not quite the same. In this case the readers are required to completely abandon

their text worlds and replace them with new worlds (Gavins 2007). It is only in the final

pages of Shutter Island that you are told by the narrator that Teddy is suffering from

Schizophrenia. At this point you realise that the story world created in the novel until this

point was untrue and was solely a simulation of the fictional reality as conceived by Teddy in

his mind. The text world built by the reader thus goes through a series of world repairs and

world replacements that are crucial to the text.

World repairs

1. Teddy’s (Edward Daniels) real name in Andrew Laeddis- they are anagrams of each other.

2. Andrew/Teddy has murdered his wife Dolores Chanal (an anagram of Rachael Solando)

3. Rachael Solando, the patient never existed.

4. Chuck is Dr Sheenan.

World replacements

1. Andrew/Teddy is a patient at Shutter Island, not merely a U.S Marshal who has come to

solve the case of a missing patient.

2. Dolores (Andrew/Teddy’s wife) was the one who killed her three children and in turn

Andrew/Teddy murdered her.

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3. Andrew/Teddy was a retired US marshal who has been on the Shutter Island being treated

for almost two years.

4. The novel has an unreliable narrator.

What do readers do when there is an unresolved end?

When the narrative text leaves the reader with an incomplete story world, it can provoke

arousal. The reader then begins to “assimilate new elements to the schema until completion

and relief occur” (Oatley 1994: 57). When confronted with an open ending the reader is most

likely to choose the ending that appears closest to their expectation (Gerrig and Rapp 2004).

Reader involvement11 results in reader expectation, and in this case the readers are left with

two options-one, Barney has murdered Boogie (either by mistake or on purpose) and two

Boogie’s death is a result of the water bomber episode.

The plausibility of the situation depends on how much you trust the narrator (Barney). If

through the narrative text, the reader has empathised with the narrator, it is likely that the

reader chooses the second ending: wherein Boogie dies as a result of the water bomber. But,

if the reader does not trust the narrator (or does not empathise with the narrator) then it might

as well be that the narrator has killed Boogie, according to reader.

On my reading of the novel, empathy towards the narrator Barney was heightened after he

was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I developed a sense of liking towards Barney and

this created a desire in me, for Barney to be in the right. Subsequently, my expectation led me

to believe that Barney could never have murdered Boogie.

At this point I’d like to draw on extracts from the novel, where Barney’s daughter, Kate (who

like certain readers empathises with Barney) believes till the end that her father was innocent,

whilst her brothers think otherwise.

“Kate, please. Don’t start. But when he wrote again and again that he was still expecting

Boogie to turn up, he was obviously lying.

Daddy did not murder Boogie.

11 Reader involvement takes place when a reader is transported from his/her real world to the fictional world of the text. (Oatley 1994)

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Kate, we’re just going to have to come to terms with the fact that daddy wasn’t all he

pretended to be.

Saul, you’re not saying anything.

Shit. Shit. Shit. How could he do such a thing?

The answer is he didn’t. “

[Barney’s Version 1997: 405]

This conversation takes place between Kate and her brothers Saul and Mike and it seems to

be echoing readers’ feelings and thoughts at this point in the narrative text. The readers, like

Kate, Saul and Mike are also trying to make up their minds about this unresolved situation. If

we empathise with Barney we take on Kate’s role in the conversation and if we don’t

empathise with Barney we take on Saul and Mike’s role in the conversation.

As mentioned earlier, his love for Miriam and his diagnoses were key factors that influenced

my empathy. So, like Barney’s daughter Kate, I believed that Barney could have never

murdered Boogie. Even if the novel had been void of the air bomber explanation, I still would

have believed that Barney was innocent. On the final page of the novel, we are given a

plausible solution, and as an empathetic reader, I have embraced that solution and found in it

an explanation to Boogie’s death.

“’Gotta find a way off this rock’, Teddy said. ‘Get our asses home’.

Chuck nodded. ‘I figured you’d say something like that’.

‘Any ideas?’

Chuck said, ‘Give me a minute.’

Teddy nodded and leaned back against the stairs. He had a minute. May be even a few

minutes. He watched Chuck raise his hand and shake his head at the same time and he saw

Cawley nod in acknowledgement and then Cawley said something to the warden and they

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crossed the lawn toward Teddy with four orderlies falling into step behind them, one of the

orderlies holding a white bundle, some sort of fabric, Teddy thinking he might have spied

some metal on it as the orderly unrolled it and it caught the sun.

Teddy said, ‘I don’t know, Chuck, you think they’re onto us?’

‘Nah.’ Chuck tilted his head back squinting a bit in the sun, and he smiled at Teddy. ‘We’re

too smart for that.’

‘Yeah, ‘Teddy said. ‘We are, aren’t we?’”

[Shutter Island 2003: 413]

These are the closing lines of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island. The novel ends in manner that

it leaves the choice of the ending in the hands of the reader. There are two possibilities as

follows:

1. Teddy is Andrew Laeddis but refuses to acknowledge it on purpose because that

would mean having to live knowing that he has murdered his wife (who killed their

three children). He would rather pretend to have regressed yet again and go through

lobotomy than live with the fact that he is a murderer.

2. Teddy is Andrew Laeddis but believes he’s Teddy Daniels when he speaks those

lines. He believes Shutter Island is a conspiracy and his “partner” Chuck is a part of it.

He has truly regressed and has gone back into his fictionalised reality.

Either way, we as readers know that Teddy is Andrew Laeddis; the question here is whether

or not Teddy/Andrew knows the truth. Has he really regressed or is he pretending to have

regressed in order to escape living with the truth? It is most likely that an empathising reader

will probably choose the second ending. Lobotomy is the causatum for both endings; Teddy

might as well undergo surgery believing he was in the right all along and that everyone

including Chuck was conspiring against him.

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Shutter Island also has another plausible interpretation for the ending: He is Teddy Daniels

and he knows it. Shutter Island is a government conspiracy, and fearing its exposure to the

outside world, the doctors have been giving Teddy drugs that induce hallucinations and

challenge his sanity. He is as he believes a good man being deceived and everyone around

him including Chuck is a conspirator. An empathising reader like me would love to hold on

to this interpretation, but that seems unlikely because of all the subtle clues given from the

beginning of the novel- Chuck fumbling with his pistol, the glances that the nurses give

Chuck (Dr Sheenan), the way the patients become agitated when Teddy asks them about

Andrew, George Noyce, who calls Teddy Andrew and blames Teddy for his condition, the

extremely limited amount of control being offered to Teddy, his dreams and so on. It is a

possibility that an extremely empathetic reader allows emotions to override logic and prefers

this ending.

On reading the novel, before the “plot twist”, it seems to the reader as though all the above

said requires reasoning and with the knowledge of Teddy being a schizophrenic, all this

seems to fall in place. Also, when the reader is finally aware of Chuck’s real identity (Dr

Shennan), the name triggers the memory of the prologue. The prologue is introduced to the

reader at the beginning as being part of the journal of Dr Sheenan.

“From the journals of Dr Sheenan”

[Shutter Island 2003: Prologue]

Dr Sheenan/Chuck is the extradiegetic narrator and it is from his point of view that the story

world is revealed to the reader. The narrator now seems, both reliable and unreliable.

Unreliable because as a third person narration, readers expect to be told in the very beginning

that Teddy/Andrew was a patient suffering from Schizophrenia but instead our knowledge is

delayed to produce the desired stylistic effect. But, at the same time we know that the narrator

is Teddy’s psychiatrist and the novel is in the form of a journal entry that details the attempt

of Dr Sheenan and Dr Cawley to bring Teddy/Andrew back to sanity. This knowledge

completely rules out the possibility that Teddy’s fictional reality is the true reality. The

reader is left with no choice but to believe that Teddy is the sixty-seventh patient. The

unresolved ending poses only two possible solutions as stated earlier and as an empathetic

reader I want to believe that Teddy has returned to his fictional reality, at least Teddy does

not have to go through the pain of knowing the truth.

Riyukta Raghunath

Empathy plays a very important role in deciding between multiple endings. My hypothesis is

that an empathising reader’s choice of ending in Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version is

likely to be that Barney is innocent regardless of whether or not explanation to Boogie’s

death in the final page existed. It can be argued that a reader who empathises with murder

would want for Barney to be guilty. And in Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, the empathising

reader either wishes to believe that Teddy’s reality is indeed true against all logic, or that

Teddy has regressed, being content about that the fact that he unlike the readers does not have

to know the truth of his situation.

Both these novels have film adaptations that go by the same name- Barney’s Version directed

by Richard J. Lewis and Shutter Island by Martin Scorsese. On my reading of these novels,

the film versions were a part of my schema. This schematised knowledge of the characters

allowed more easily for empathy (Gavins 2007). The film versions also give you an almost

definite end, in Barney’s Version we are forced to believe that Boogie died as a result of the

‘water bomber’ plane and Shutter Island finishes with Teddy telling Chuck/Dr Sheenan that

“one can live as a monster, or die as a good man” before he leaves with the orderlies. This

movie version of ‘Shutter Island’ is important because it opens the reader to a whole new

perspective - Teddy is completely cured. Dr. Cawley's experiment is a success! But Teddy

wants to end his life in full cognition of his situation, realizing that he has nothing left to live

for. A WW-II killing machine like him could hardly be lobotomized, unless with his

complete consent.

Riyukta Raghunath

CONCLUSION- AN EXTENSION OF MY STUDY

In this essay I have tried to elucidate the fact that empathy plays a vital function in trying to

reach a conclusive end. This essay is an analysis based on my experience of reading both,

Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version and Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island. Based on their

research, Gerrig and Rapp in their ‘Psychological processes underlying literary impact’ have

mentioned that readers assimilate propositions in a way that it has an impact on their

judgements and similar to how readers expect what happens, I am convinced that when there

is an unresolved issue they tend to incline their belief to what they hope is the truth. This

hope is largely governed by empathy.

An empirical study similar to that achieved by Gerrig and Rapp should be carried out to

assess and record whether or not there is a pattern between empathy and readers’ expectation

and whether or not this pattern influences the final choice of endings. The hypothesis is that,

it does and this can be further influenced by the film adaptations. Both the movie adaptations

of these narrative texts seem to incline towards a definite ending.

Additionally an empirical study recording readers’ choice of endings can be studied and a

pattern can be drawn between choice of endings and character empathy. Further, the extracts

that I have labelled implicit markers of empathy can be excluded from the text and a different

set of readers can be asked to read the edited narrative text and their results can be studied. If

it is that the readers who have read the edited version are void of empathy towards the main

character resulting in them choosing the alternate endings, it can be concluded that character

empathy does play a key role in resolving endings.

Based on the film adaptations, a third empirical study can be effectuated where readers are

divided into two groups - one group containing readers who have only read the book and the

other containing readers who have read the book and watched the movie. Through this it

seems likely that we can study whether or not film adaptations influence readers when

deciding on a culmination.

Word count- 5984

Riyukta Raghunath

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Riyukta Raghunath

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Total word count- 6286