Narrative Empathy at the Crossroads of Youth Literature and Video Games: Analysis of Selected Narrative Elements

Narrative empathy is a form of engaging with the experiences of narrative characters, triggered by reading, watching, listening to, or experiencing a story. This process can occur during the creation of the work, but our chapter focuses on the phenomenon of narrative empathy during the reader’s experience of a cultural object (in our case, a literary work and a video game). Within the analysis of narrative empathy, we compare narrative elements in two thematic sections: (1) the experience of refuge, where we analyze the motif of using a smartphone on the refugee journey, and (2) the experience of non-heterosexual sexual orientation, where we confirm the strengthening of narrative empathy through the portrayal of narrative spaces. Through a cross-media comparison of the impact of narrative elements, we confirmed the potential of the selected narrative techniques to enhance the experience of empathy and the ability to read at a higher level.