I was cutting kale this week—which is, I admit, a horrible opening to an essay—when I sliced a good chunk off my finger—which is, I believe, a little better. This is a moment to remember that all decent protagonists are technically antiheroes. Page one comes with a flaw, an imperfection or shortcoming or vulnerability, for which the storyline serves to correct. The wound at the tip of my finger—dramatic, meaningful, profound, a punishment worthy of Dante, deep enough to make it Shakespearean—just might begin an epic. Fine, let it bleed, I think.
Besides, a little insouciance during a stressful, adversarial moment is a trait that I possess. Or it is at least a trait that I like to believe that I possess. Sometimes the desire to possess the trait is sufficient enough to fashion the change anyway, so there’s probably not much difference. And donating a few pints of crimson into a midday salad is certainly a good time to practice calmness. Although this behavior—remaining unruffled when the expectation is for ruffled—has resulted in peculiar conflicts in my past. I remember them as times when I am more clearly identified as the antihero. For moments when I’ve stayed nonchalant, I have been called, on previous occasions, strange, odd, abnormal, inhuman, and—rather memorably—annoying, as I’ve learned that there’s nothing more tedious than staying calm while someone else shouts. In literary terms, the word that arises is relatable, one of the most misunderstood and misused words in literature land. And in the opening scene this week, the unrelatable protagonist manages to combine three separate, discordant acts: he laughs, feels indifferent, and absorbs pain.
What should be meant by the term relatability in literature is something that’s akin to comprehensibility: Can I comprehend the experience of calmness while undergoing one half of an unwanted and unexpected transfusion? Are his reactions so peculiar that I’ve been shaken from the story? The point is humanness, emotionality, whether what happens on the page is a reaction that can be understood, regardless of whether the reader agrees or feels it too. Yet what ends up being discussed about relatability is something that’s more akin to resemblance: Am I also a man who has cut my finger while failing to make a salad? How can I possibly relate to eating kale?
If you happen to be a ten year old girl who lives in a small town somewhere in Asia—which doesn’t describe me in three different ways—but who can comprehend a cut on your finger, then you can relate to my experience. Only the most superficial among us limits the notion of relatability to immutable characteristics. I would suggest that any discussion of character relatability that doesn’t dive into what’s most human about all readers is vacuous. But that’s not the commonplace assumption, as you can observe in the relentless appearance of critical pieces that question popular characters: Why is the antihero so popular? What does it mean when society adores repulsive characters? Can anybody relate to a man who fails to make a nutritious salad? In nearly all cases, the critical lens is restricted to the surface, even though the subject requires going deep into the water. There’s no focus on what’s most human, the subject is exclusively political or cultural or sociological, which is another way of stating that there’s no interest in the literary.
Feel free to call off this whole literature business if that happens to be untrue. Toss your old notebooks into a bag and get into oil refining. Once the gap between people can’t be closed, once the possibility of connection is lost, if it turns out that my readers, this week, are exclusively men who have cut their fingers while making a salad, then there’s no purpose in reading.
But my mind soon drifts: how many perfectly healthy people have been killed on the way to visit a physician for a routine appointment? It must happen, statistically, pretty regularly, in a world as crowded as ours. This thought comes amid a realization that it is truly foolish to lose a piece of yourself while attempting to put together a nutritious meal. Nothing seems worse in this moment than the irony of collapsing while exercising, choking on broccoli, or overdosing on health supplements. So I think you can relate as I attempt to uncork a bottle of wine with one hand and make it the main course while the salad stays to the side—as an analgesic, of course, my finger still gushing.
Obviously whenever somebody falls from a casino balcony or slips down the stairs of a seedy bar or is caught in a disreputable motel three states away, foreheads are pained from the pressure of raised eyebrows, chins lift far above noses, as there’s no quicker reaction than the impulse to condemn: How foolish? What was the point? That’s what you get. The feeling of satisfaction that comes with judgement can certainly be labeled relatable. As can the distinction between something happening to you and watching something happen to someone else: Mel Brooks said that tragedy is when he cuts his finger and comedy is when you fall into a manhole and die, and I do consider that very relatable. You do get sympathy if your pain comes in a way that’s deemed tragic, but you also get judgement if the ending comes in a way that’s fitting for the activity.
Sympathy is a word that appears alongside relatability in literary discussions, especially when it is nudged close to the word empathy. Both of those words are often used interchangeably, though that dangerous slippage in usage should be avoided—ignoring these distinctions is, incidentally, one method of prodding me past any sense of poise. Sympathy involves sharing a sensation. If someone feels sadness, you feel it too; if someone cuts a finger, you feel the anguish of a difficult life. Empathy, nearly everyone seems to have forgotten, is a bit colder, more stoic, and even rational: it is the ability to perceive and understand another person’s state. You can even spot in the chasm between these two words an interesting place for literature: sympathy prompts you to feel sadness when someone cries while empathy prompts you to understand why they cry. To have the latter but not the former describes some of our most classic novels. And maintaining this distinction seems, well, fairly important. I don’t want the team of international physicians called on to deal with the tragedy of my finger to be distracted by notions of sympathy, but I do want them to have empathy.
Once again I tell myself—the blood pooling on the counter, early thoughts about the quantity that I have to spare—that every protagonist is an antihero. Vulnerability, perhaps the only universal truth, is what’s most relatable, regardless of our ephemeral differences. So perhaps the opening line of this essay served its purpose, as it takes just the tiniest bit of empathy to bring the reader closer. Just the tiniest bit of connection and understanding, even when the differences between people appear insurmountable.
Because every writer and reader is still, in the end, afraid of the dark, despite any stoical protest to the contrary. We might be selfish, myopic, and even cruel—especially when the smallest of pains hint toward much bigger pains—but we can recognize that the journey from womb to tomb is a shared fate. Show me a literature where actual, human vulnerability is exposed, and I’ll show you a healthy culture. Show me, instead, a culture that desires smiling audiences and happy protagonists, that coordinates its stories to its audiences, and I’ll show you an unhealthy culture. Today, I experienced a bit of physical pain, nothing too much, nothing too dramatic, but about as universal and relatable as I can imagine, says the bleeding, light-headed romantic.
Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries. Thank you, Charles!
"How could I possibly relate to eating kale?"
" ...the irony of collapsing while exercising, choking on broccoli, or overdosing on health supplements...."
You don't bring out your sense of humor very often, Charles. It is a real treat when you do. By the way, that kale will kill you. I suggest switching to baby spinach -- much less dangerous. Although I find if I add coconut oil to kale it makes it easier to scrape into the garbage can... just saying.