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영어

This essay examines shame and empathy in Caryl Phillips’s fifth novel, Crossing the River, by focusing on two first-person narratives of white characters — namely, “Crossing the River” and “Somewhere in England.” In “Crossing the River,” narrated by a white captain of a slave ship in the 18th-century, and “Somewhere in England,” consisting of journals written by a white Englishwoman in the 20th-century, Phillips evokes different degrees of empathy, leading to vicarious shame in the former and an extension of the diasporic community in the latter. The captain’s narrative creates an emotionally discomforting reading experience, revealing not only the inhumanity of the slave trade but also his own shamelessness, thereby eliciting vicarious shame. In “Somewhere in England,” on the other hand, empathy serves as a foundation for ‘postmodern blackness,’ allowing an emotionally isolated and socially marginalized white woman in 20th-century England to be embraced by the African diaspora community. Through the voices of white narrators, Crossing the River suggests that slavery is integral to white as well as black history, and invites readers to emotionally engage with the history of slavery and move beyond essentialist notions of blackness.