Literary Fiction and Empathy

Reading literary fiction can help you understand others because it allows your imagination to fill in the gaps that aren't provided. In literary fiction, authors don't give you a superfluous amount of description for each character, so just based off what relatively little information they have given you, you are expected to interpret how they will react or what they are actually feeling. This skill can then be carried over into real life as you go to interviews or on blind dates and can act as a huge help. In Hamlet, Shakespeare doesn't directly describe him as an emotional character who is in control of his feelings, we have to infer that based on his soliloquy and reactions to previous occurrences. Literary fiction thus challenges us to become more observant and empathetic people as we try and decipher the world around us.