International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

E-ISSN: 2582-2160   •   Impact Factor: 9.24

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Volume 8 Issue 4
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Minds in the Water: Theory of Mind, Narrative Empathy, and the Cultivation of Ecological Care in Ebele Mọgọ’s Omaliyi

Author(s) Ms. Niveda Baskaran, Dr. Calaivanane R
Country India
Abstract This paper explores the role of the psychological concept of theory of mind, the ability to attribute beliefs, desires, and emotions to another individual, in understanding how the genre of climate fiction creates empathy toward non-human beings. Using Ebele Mọgọ’s short story Omaliyi (from the Grist Imagine 2200 climate fiction anthology, 2022) as an extended case study, this paper brings together scholarship on theory of mind, both cognitive and emotional dimensions, narrative empathy, Lisa Zunshine’s literary cognitive perspective on fiction as a mechanism that exercises reader’s mind-reading and metarepresentational capacities, and nature connectedness. Omaliyi tells of the re-emergence of a river’s inner life into the consciousness of a community that no longer pays heed to it. The river is not merely used as an object of use but rather as a subject of address, and this is enacted structurally. The paper argues that giving a mind to a non-human agent, even a fictional one, is the starting point for engaging with the subject empathetically and morally. Climate fiction applies this method similar to current legal and political attempts such as the recognition of river personhood, granting the non-human entity the status of a subject rather than a resource. In the final section of the paper, the boundaries of anthropomorphized empathy as an environmental strategy are discussed.
Keywords Theory of Mind, Narrative Empathy, Climate Fiction, Anthropomorphism, Ecological Care
Field Arts
Published In Volume 8, Issue 4, July-August 2026
Published On 2026-08-14
DOI https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i04.85708
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CrossRef DOI prefix of IJFMR is 10.36948/ijfmr

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