Epiphany

Epiphany is a religious term that means “A revelatory manifestation of a divine being or a sudden insight or intuitive understanding” (Webster 384). Lionel Trilling, also, defines Epiphany as literary device that one experienced something unexpected on someone or something, and it changes one’s understanding of someone or something. This unexpected…

Albert Camus was an award-winning French author who expressed his absurdist views on the meaning of life and the purpose of humans in his esteemed novels, especially his 1942 classic The Stranger. The Stranger demonstrates Camus’ absurdist beliefs, sending a message to the world that life is meaningless and that personal values deserve to be defended. In this novel, Camus’ character of Meursault is the “stranger” that the title refers to because he is greatly misunderstood by his society due…

King Lear involves the ageing protagonist who had decided to resign his throne to his three daughters in exchange for a fulfilling speech. Throughout the play, the king stumbles upon numerous human experiences, that include: Pride, Betrayal and Epiphany. A person’s pride and self-righteousness can influence the individual’s judgement and behaviour, their better judgement could be clouded by their selfishness and may have a negative impact on others. Pride is evidently prominent throughout the…

The Catcher in the Rye and the Pursuit of Pipe Dreams The struggle to find and achieve a definite goal in our finite lives is at the epitome of the human experience. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, sixteen year old Holden Caulfield believes that his life’s work is to take on the impossible task of holding others back from growing up and losing their innocence. Holden’s quest and subsequent struggle to fulfill this goal leads him on a journey both physically and psychologically…

One of the most common themes is, epiphany. In both short stories the protagonist has an epiphany, which allows them to explore the freedom they have longed for through the window. However the themes are also polar opposites in the sense that in “Araby” the narrator’s epiphany has to do with gaining freedom through love and “The Story of an Hour” has to do with gaining freedom through a lost lover. Another…

major themes and motifs that are present in the stories leading up to it. One important theme throughout Joyce’s works is the nature of the epiphany, the sudden realization of something about one’s self. Having an epiphany is always a step towards maturity and it is something everyone will encounter during his life. Joyce manifests the notion of the epiphany through symbolic motifs that appear in the short stories, such as the references to circles, glasses, and the East in comparison to the…

has multiple epiphanies such as, where he realizes that his job takes up most of his life and is unable to form any intimate relationships with another individual. Another, instance is where Gregor battles against himself to succumb to his natural tendencies of a bug, or try to maintain what human aspects he has left. Finally, the last epiphany is when he has no regrets passing away for his family, and realizes this is the only way to help them. Ultimately, through Gregor’s epiphanies he…

In The Book of My Lives, Hemon introduces multiple topics that in a way or another result in the change of point of view through relating to similar experiences that Hemon had. Displacement is a topic that he was challenged with, as his change of surroundings caused him to go through a phase where he became aware of failure of reconnecting to his identity. Hemon is first challenged with displacement during the time that he is conscribed in the Yugoslav People’s Army and begins to hold a…

ambitions were and why he did not reach them. When the writing shifts to the outside of his life, Pip has more of a chance to evaluate himself and the world as he thinks about what his epiphany has brought to him and how it has benefitted him, and he is able to improve and set new ambitions based on the epiphany. The self improvement also outlines Pip’s shift from youth to maturity during his…

Teddy’s epiphany is demonstrated by Nowlan with the line, “The city was as he had left it. Yet everything had changed.” (pg.45). This is a coherent example of Teddy’s epiphany because it is clear that his love and passion for the city have disappeared. The city that once brought Teddy so much joy could not even put a smile on his face anymore…