Lauren\u2019s hyperempathy is something that could be glossed over, potentially, as a means of establishing reader sympathy, and furthering Lauren\u2019s strength and vulnerability as a protagonist.\u00a0 However, this \u201cdelusion\u201d of hers begs further inquiry, in light of the seriousness of the novel\u2019s other themes.\u00a0 Lauren is gifted with a level of foresight which allows her to see past risky immediate gains, which her brother pursues, and the backwards looking stoicism of the community elders. This capacity of hers seems fundamentally tied up in the pain she has had to endure through hyperempathy.\u00a0 The ability to intimately feel the suffering of others gives her a visceral sense of the overall decay of the community.\u00a0 Her concern for the fate of the community and even humanity as a whole, then, is not an affected or superficial one. She carries the pain of the neighborhood in a way that is beyond mere emotion, or intellectual concern \u2013 it is somatized, made physical and real. This lends heavily to the religious themes of the novel. \u00a0Lauren becomes martyr-like, almost in the vein of a Christ figure, forced to suffer the outcomes of social degradation alone on behalf of the greater community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this regard, Keith is her greatest opposite thus far in the novel.\u00a0 He is a sociopath, totally numb to the violence and pain he inflicts in pursuit of short term gains and a sense of manhood, power, and status. At the same time, he represents the flawed logic of the wanderers outside, who exist merely to stake a bloody claim in a violently careless world, a position of total transience and futility.\u00a0 Regardless, Keith\u2019s frustration with the stagnation of the neighborhood is warranted \u2013 it is a place of hopeless and delusional atavism, doomed to fail gradually in the same way that Keith is destroyed abruptly.\u00a0 Lauren\u2019s religion stands in contrast to both Keith\u2019s reckless desire for newness and her father\u2019s old fashioned stoicism.\u00a0 It pushes for radical, progressive change, but in a way that is calculated, based on the formation of an essentially new<\/em> idea of community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lauren\u2019s hyperempathy is something that could be glossed over, potentially, as a means of establishing reader sympathy, and furthering Lauren\u2019s strength and vulnerability as a protagonist.\u00a0 However, this \u201cdelusion\u201d of hers begs further inquiry, in light of the seriousness of the novel\u2019s other themes.\u00a0 Lauren is gifted with a level of foresight which allows her… Continue reading Hyperempathy, Religion and Community<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}