Abstract
This paper poses the question of what it means to be âinsideâ the terroristâs mind and explore the terroristâs mentality by means of a narrative, such as the terrorist novel and the terrorist memoir. Consequently, the paper focuses on authorial strategies of empathy and sympathy in texts that privilege the terrorist characterâs subjective viewpoint and experience. The discussion operates on the premise that narrative techniques have bearing on the readersâ response to the story, even if it there is no guaranteed correspondence between a certain technique and a certain effect. Thus, the paper asks how first-person narration, the interior representation of a personâs consciousness, and extended direct representation of speech, can contribute to empathic and sympathetic effects in specific ways. After a brief look on the ironic method, i.e. alternation between ironic distance and sympathy for the terrorist character, and the narrative of changing minds, i.e. a story where a character abandons his plot for destruction, the discussion moves into an extended analysis of three examples where the narrative as a whole suggests sympathy for terrorist cause and tactics. The examples include Yukio Mishimaâs novel Runaway Horses (Honba 1969), Richard Jacksonâs dialogue novel Confessions of a Terrorist (2014), and Omar Nasiriâs memoir Inside the Global Jihad (2006).
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