There is a technique in the art of narration by which empathy can be extracted in response to the travails of even the most repellant of protagonists. It could even be argued that such narrative arts exist solely for this purpose. And yet, if the deep structuring of narrative is indeed directed to the end of redeeming heroes in the eyes of the downtrodden, it also throws out unintended consequences which at their most basic are coded as: a protagonist who is not identical to the interest of the institution of which he is an agent. There occurs an empathic turn in literature which is activated through the integration within the narrative of the reader's empathic consumption of the protagonist which thereby alters the constraints of his heroism. More specifically, the protagonist becomes somewhat separated from the institution he once personified and appears more completely within the readers' expectations. This separation, which allows the consumers of narrative an opportunity for active, or desiring, consumption of the narrative object, is perhaps initially set in motion by a political weakening within the institution (rather than by active consumer demand) and tends to follow two basic routes into an empathic account of power relations: 1. Where the institution is historically in retreat and the protagonist appears as the embodiment of elegiac resilience, he both preserves its essence and yet also articulates its end (the king of the mountain; the old man of the sea; the last gunfighter); 2. Where the protagonist fully belongs to, and sees the world from, the perspective of a particular institution but whose narrated actions run counter to its principles and practice (the maverick cop; the spy who came in from the cold; the special forces renegade). In the first case, the protagonist is tragic guardian, in the second his role is ironic antagonist.
