Empathy In Where The Heart Is By Leslie Berlin

On April 3, 2013, I could not remember what my home felt like anymore because my memory went completely black. The sounds of beeping machines surround me as a knife-like pain shoots through my eye. I have no idea where I am; the last thing I remember is walking to dinner with my sister. As I slowly open my eyes, only my left eye can see. I reach up; my right eye is swollen shut. My brain attempts to recollect the past, but it is unable. The blurriness slowly clears, and I see my family standing above me, their faces in utter shock. My sister Liza holds back tears and asks if I remember falling over the stair railing. She goes on to explain that I smashed the right side of my face against the edge of a stair, and after an hour-long ride on the

Her story, which starts in Nazi Germany, describes the journey of Sophie as she is forced to move from one country to another and in the process, loses many people she loves and moves on to form new relationships; Berlin proves that one can find home anywhere. However, for me, Berlin reminded me that there is a difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the ability to understand other people’s feelings as if we had them ourselves; contrastingly, sympathy refers to the ability to take part in someone else’s feelings, mostly by feeling sorrowful about their misfortune. For most, people find themselves at home when they are surrounded by empathic individuals, those who attempt to understand and relate to their emotions and

I soon realized there was nothing ordinary about them. I had to relearn tennis with the foam balls I played with as a four-year-old. Resuming soccer, a sport I genuinely love proved even more challenging. It took me awhile, but I trained myself to continually swivel my head and check over my shoulders to see the opponents’ positioning. Surveying the field from a variety of angles, rather than relying on my peripheral vision as I did before my accident, has made me a better player. Thus, I had to change; my injury forced me to adapt. Similarly, in “Where the Heart Is”, “Sophie, too, transforms herself” (Berlin 82). Sophie transformed from a schoolgirl of a middle-class family who could barely pass her classes to a wife of a prominent industrialist living in a penthouse (Berlin 82). Sophie reshaped her identity as she adjusted to living in a new home. With no place where Sophie and I felt home, we were forced to find a new