The Lost Eyes in the Digital World: The Relevance of Yusuf Idris’s Short Story “Nadzrah” to the Empathy Crisis of Modern Humanity

Abstract

This study examines Yusuf Idris’s short story “Nazrah” as a reflection of the empathy crisis in modern digital society. Using the sociology of literature approach and modern empathy theory, this research explores how Idris’s realist narrative, which portrays a brief encounter between a middle-class man and a poor girl carrying goods on her head, represents the distance between awareness and compassion, between seeing and feeling. The central symbol of the story, the look (nazrah), functions as a metaphor for passive empathy, defined as the ability to recognize suffering without emotional involvement. The data were collected through textual analysis of the Arabic text and its translations, supported by secondary sources on empathy studies and digital behavior. The analysis reveals three interrelated layers of meaning within the story: narrative-empirical, symbolic-sociological, and moral-philosophical. Idris presents the act of “looking” as both a social and moral gesture, depicting a society accustomed to witnessing suffering from a safe distance. The findings indicate that the empathy gap portrayed in 1950s Egypt mirrors the empathy crisis of the 21st century. In both contexts, individuals are exposed to the pain of others, either through the street or the screen, yet fail to respond with genuine emotional connection. This study concludes that Nazrah transcends its temporal and cultural boundaries and offers a timeless moral critique of dehumanization and emotional detachment.