Establishing pity in an audience through the course of a narrative is synonymous with modulating the empathy they should experience for the tribulations and vicissitudinous events categorizing the journey of the main character. Archetypically, protagonists accrue this pity through enduring the cumbrous adversity concomitant with a hero’s tale. Resonant moments of struggle and success in conjunction with effectively grounded and complex characterizations ingratiate the audience with their assigned protagonist, and should suffice to precipitate emotional investment and rapport. However, should the primary voice and perspective seen throughout the piece be helmed by an individual whose behavior and intentions are wrought with execrable narcissism, cruelty, and violence in contrast to the selfless munificence of the tragic hero, can there still be pity elicited for them?
Demonstrably, Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Richard II from the eponymous play, and Humbert Humbert from Lolita are defined by the depiction of their respective contraventions throughout the first half of their tales, while the second half reverses their fortunes and represents the tormentor becoming tormented, and the suffering repaid in full. Despite what may seem like judicious recompense, somewhere beneath this satisfaction and righteousness lies a sense of ineffable pity for the fate of these characters. Its existence doesn’t diminish the vileness of their prior actions, yet, it elucidates the unignorable, complicated humanity intrinsic to these people and makes the audience firmly question what appropriate justice truly means, if justice is always fair, and if this fairness can be guaranteed regardless of being deserved. In the assent of this lies pity.
Through the scrutinizing lens of a pessimistic interpretation, pity, itself, can be employed by the protagonist in a concerted effort to commandeer the narrative and manipulate the audience’s perspective associated with their actions and decisions. Capitalizing on a person’s emotional vulnerability affords the dilution of the potency of the character’s pernicious behaviors and intentionally amplifies the pain of the subsequent justice they have self-incurred. In a sense, the purported intensity of the sorrow and misery they endure is a falsity, a mimicry of genuine human suffering and emotion. The induced pity is purposeful, desired as a method of self-preservation to somewhat mollify the excoriating judgement wracked by their respective audiences. Alex, Richard, and Humbert all speak to the audience, employing euphemistic, sanitizing, or eloquently descriptive language to temper the profundity of their actions and conversely emphasize and exaggerate the societal vilification and torment they endure. In this interpretation, the sociopathic inclinations of these characters are expressed rather unequivocally, and their narratives, as a whole, represent an almost cautionary approach to the impetuous granting of pity to the characters that may not deserve such benevolent depictions.
Oppositional to prior assumptive interpretation, there exists another possible intent for the emotional soliloquizing to the audience; essentially, the character is imbued with pseudo-masochistic ostentation in performative self-pity where debasement and victimhood are proscriptive for the elevation of self to martyr-like status. Inextricably linked to their identity is this insuperable belief in their own innocence and, resultantly, a societal centrism of fault and blame. For instance, Alex personally argues that the oppressive rigidity of his government and the suppression of choice and personal freedom directly instigated his own rebellious subversion of the law, making him a victim and a symbol of actionable liberation. Richard, too, perceives himself with generous neutrality, subjected to the traitors which conspired to enact their own judgement upon him. His self-depiction is exaggerated and Christ-like, comparing his predicament to the biblical betrayal. Humbert contextualizes his deplorable treatment of Lolita by questioning its illegality and professing its permissibility in past or foreign societies. In these cases, the trajectory of blame is external, purposely exculpating the characters and encouraging pity in the audience for the harsh treatment they endure at no supposed fault of their own.
Additionally, we also have the possibility that pity is more than just elicited resulting from the intentional behavior of the characters, but also as a rather organic consequence of subjecting them to excessive retributive violence. Pity becomes more synonymous with empathy when the reactionary recompense arguably goes too far, and the desire to see this form of justice enacted becomes nebulous and wavering in its vehemence and certainty. The pained soliloquies of the protagonists are rightfully evocative in light of this, and the discussion turns to whether to stay the wielded weapon of vengeance. We then must ask, when has justice been sufficiently executed? Despite the character never seeking repentance for their actions, can pity be elicited without resolution or admission of guilt?
The efficacy in incurring pity when a character experiences tribulations wrought as a consequence of their own odious, egotistical desires is generally demonstrable of complexity in a narrative, and the ability to rend a heart with empathy for such an individual despite this is rather telling of a characterization imbued with depth and linguistic nuance. I suppose, ultimately, our response to these characters and the extent of the pity elicited is calibrated to our personal feelings and representational of a deeper, more internal anatomization of ourselves and who we feel truly deserves it in the end.