The Anti-hero

I watched The Shawshank Redemption today for the 4th time. There is this scene where I always inevitably tear at. Today was no exception. It is the scene where Brooks hangs himself after he was on parole from a life-time imprisonment sentence. That scene always gets to me and it makes me wonder why. Was the the music that makes it extra sad, or is it the tone that Brooks narrated his loneliness? Perhaps it's a combination of both.

When I watched that scene play through, I was reminded of a short conversation in again the book Seven types of Ambiguity. I flipped through my book and I found the author's explanation.

In it, Simon is engaging with a conversation with Angel(the prostitute) and Alex (his psychiatrist):

Simon: You read a novel in which the hero or the anti-hero, the one you like, or simply the one whose progress you like to follow, well, this character commits a crime, say, a violent act. Who do you feel sorry for? You should feel sorry for the victim of the crime but you don't. Why don't you? In your normal life you condemn violence of any kind yet you don't condemn this act of violence, even though it's brutal. Perhaps you dislike this victim. Or perhaps you don't actually dislike him but you don't actively like him either. So where will your sympathies lie? Who will you feel sorry for?

Angel: Who? The perpetrator?

Simon: Partly. He has to live with the moral and practical consequences, the guilt, the mess and the fear of detection. But who else?

Angel: I don't know. Who else?

Simon: You, the reader, Angel. The reader will feel sorry for himself."

Alex: Why, because he has been tricked into thinking the violent scene is somehow morally ambiguous when, of course, it isn't really?

Simon: No because he has identified with his preferred character, the perpetrator of the crime, and therefore shares his guilt and his fears.

Is this what empathy is really about?
*Ponder**Ponder**Ponder*