lugeeuh:
I have grandparents who died in a Lithuanian ghetto, and other lost relations whom the blackshirts killed amid the bitter snows of Russia, and yet I didn't cry while watching this movie either. Nor did I cry watching Grave of the Fireflies. Still, you'd probably consider me a wuss, since I did cry watching Shoah, Claudio Lanzman's documentary about the Holocaust, which featured many interviews with camp survivors.
And there is almost always a holocaust going on in the world against someone. There is always some group targeted for misery and extinction and deserving of our help.
I wouldn't expect a kid in the eighth grade to cry watching tragic films. In the first place, no thirteen-year-old boy wants to seem weak. In the second, suffering probably hasn't become real for him yet -- not other people's suffering, anyway. He and his family are still the center of his universe.
If you're a sociopath, then you'll continue not being affected by such things into old age. But that's unlikely. It's more probable that, little by little, things will happen to you as you mature that will make loss and tragedy more real. Then, when you watch a movie or read a book, the people you've lost and the tragedy you've witnessed in your lifetime will connect with what happens to people in stories, and the effect will feel more emotional than it does now.
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