Apathy in Literature: A Discourse on Emotionless Characters and Concepts

This discourse focuses on the different concepts of apathy that appear in literature. Not only characterizations of apathetic protagonists, but also abstract concepts of apathy help to explore this special topic. Several important literary works from all sorts of genres function as examples to explain these concepts. Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, ‘Camus’ ‘The Stranger’, Palahniuk’s ‘Fight Club’, Süskind’s ‘Perfume’, and Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ are only few of many literary works which are examined under the aspect of apathy in this study. Apathy is the lack of any kind of emotion. As emotions are essential to the conception of the human being, many approaches to understand this phenomenon have been made. The fields of psychology and biology are only two of several sciences which try to explain this phenomenon of alexithymia. But, whereas the core and origin of this human condition are still being analyzed, literature has been using the theme of apathy in several different ways. How this theme is used and which different concepts of apathy exist, will be examined in this discourse.