Help me find stories of epiphanies.

November 24, 2014 6:54 AM

Help me find stories of epiphanies, particularly striking moments of self-awareness. Fictional, non-fictional, any kind of medium (books, articles, video, etc...).

I'd like to listen/read/watch stories of people's epiphanies. By epiphany I mean a sudden and striking moment of self-awareness. Less "this is the missing part of the equation I've been working on for several months" and more "I've doing XYZ for most of my life because of unresolved childhood issues." In other words, an epiphany centered around a person's own behavior/feelings rather than some external thing like a work dilemma, or other person.

I'm especially interested in the impact (or lack thereof) of the epiphany.

posted by joeyjoejoejr to Society & Culture (18 answers total)

Best answer: Many of the stories in James Joyce's "Dubliners" collection explore the idea of epiphany.
posted by icemill at 7:30 AM on November 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

“It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody. I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everybody was, especially me. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and than make the choice to share it with other people. You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is. And we could all sit around and wonder and feel bad about each other and blame a lot of people for what they did or didn't do or what they didn't know. I don't know. I guess there could always be someone to blame. It's just different. Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Because it's okay to feel things. I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite. I feel infinite.” -- The Perks of Being A Wallflower
posted by empath at 8:19 AM on November 24, 2014

Well, Proust's bite of his madeleine - more trigger for self-study than external thing.
posted by mmiddle at 8:21 AM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Clueless: I love Josh
posted by Flamingo at 8:31 AM on November 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

Dicken's A Christmas Carol is the dernier cri of this sort of thing.

If you want a painting, The Awakening Conscience is pretty great.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:32 AM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Maybe a little different from what you're looking for, but Sweeny Todd's song "Epiphany," available on the both original soundtrack and in the Tim Burton picture, is quite the dramatic epiphany.
posted by holborne at 9:34 AM on November 24, 2014

Yup, if you open the dictionary to look up "epiphany", the dictionary will hurl a copy of "Dubliners" at you. Or something like that.
posted by kariebookish at 10:03 AM on November 24, 2014

Piers Paul Read's novels usually deal with Catholicism and characters have epiphanies in churches in A Married Man and The Third Day-- that I can think of; there are probably more. Characters' behavior will also be attributed to epiphanies or Damascene moments of one sort or another.

In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, I am pretty sure Julia makes a decision based on a sort of epiphany and I bet there are others.
posted by BibiRose at 10:15 AM on November 24, 2014

I'll make a case for literal "come to Jesus" moments, and not just because of the old "festival of the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles" meaning of epiphany. People who realize that, "I've doing XYZ for most of my life because of unresolved childhood issues," have typically just encountered a new theory that purports to explain their behaviour and feelings, and that feels like self-awareness. Religious conversions often work the same way; "I am a sinner" and the like can feel like moments of sudden, intense, brand-new self-awareness.

Here, for example, is Johnny Cash:

There in Nickajack Cave I became conscious of a very clear, simple idea: I was not in charge of my destiny. I was not in charge of my own death.

And in this collection, put together by the elves working for everybody's favourite Christian, Pat Robertson, you'll find plenty of contemporary examples:

"I’m fearfully and wonderfully made," she declares. "The first time God showed that to me, I got it. I finally believed it. Never before in my life did I ever think that I was fearfully or wonderfully made. I thought I was an accident or I thought maybe I had come out under the radar. God didn’t even know that I got here. He’d have to look me up or something. So for Him to tell me that I was fearfully and wonderfully made was amazing."

And more:

"Then he kissed me. Before I realized it, he was on top of me, and I was like, 'Oh my god, I’m having sex with my father.'...I was 16 years old....

"I was 36 years old when my eyes were opened to the devil. That’s a scary sight. Immediately I knew that I never wanted to sleep with him again. Immediately I knew that I’m better than this. Immediately I wanted to live."

I doubt this is exactly what you're looking for, but I hope it puts an interesting twist on what you're thinking about.
posted by clawsoon at 10:32 AM on November 24, 2014

Angel Heart? (with Mickey Rourke in case there are other film, media by that name). Hard to become more self-aware.
Breaking Bad. Several great epiphanies. "I am the one who knocks." "I did this for me. I felt alive."
Wizard of Oz (film). "There's no place like home."
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:49 AM on November 24, 2014

Best answer: Alice Munro's short story "Corrie" (link to full story in The New Yorker). Devastating. There's a good reason she won the Nobel last year.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:51 PM on November 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

My suggestion is "Thirty-Three Happy Moments" by Jin Shengtan / Chin Shengt'an, a 17th century scholar & playwright. It's a wonderful piece.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 3:47 PM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I believe Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko would fit this theme.
posted by gudrun at 5:24 PM on November 24, 2014

Not sure if this is what you mean, but Alec Guinness near the end of "The Bridge on the River Kwai" has a sudden realization about what he's been up to.
posted by neutralmojo at 11:11 AM on November 25, 2014

Franny and Zooey--epiphany (and potential for ensuing breakdown) is a major thematic element. Also Salinger's story "Teddy" from Nine Stories.
posted by ifjuly at 11:27 AM on November 25, 2014

Billy Mac has an epiphany about 'people you love' in "Love Actually". I'm sure it's on YouTube somewhere.

[ Scene #66 ]
Joe: What the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be at Elton John's.
Billy: Well, I was there for a minute or two and then I had an epiphany.
Joe: Really?
Billy: Yeah.
Joe: Come on. Just come up. So what was this epiphany?
Billy: Erm, it...it was about Christmas.
Joe: You realized that it was all around.
Billy: No. I realized that Christmas is the time to be with the people you love.
Joe: Right.
Billy: And I realized that, as dire chance and fateful cock-up would have it, here I am, mid-fifties, and without knowing it, I've gone and spent most of my adult life with a chubby employee. And, much as it grieves me to say it, it might be that the people I love is, in fact... you.
Joe: Well, this is a surprise.
Billy: Yeah.
Joe: Ten minutes at Elton John's and you're gay as a maypole.
Billy: No, look. I'm serious here. I left Elton's and a hefty number of half-naked chicks with their mouths open in order to hang out with you at Christmas.
Joe: Well, Bill...
Billy: It's a terrible, terrible mistake, chubs... but you turn out to be the fucking love of my life. And to be honest, despite all my complaining... we have had a wonderful life.
Joe: Well... thank you. I mean, come on, it's been an honour. I feel very proud.
Billy: Oh, look, don't be a moron. Come on, let's get pissed and watch porn
posted by guy72277 at 12:45 AM on November 26, 2014

The moment in the movie Body Heat when Ned Racine figures it all out.
posted by andreap at 7:53 AM on November 28, 2014

Connie Willis wrote a wonderful sort of Christian-mythos-themed short story called Epiphany. I found a copy on a sketchy Polish website here, but it's also available in her collected short stories, Winds of Marble Arch.
posted by you're a kitty! at 7:07 PM on December 1, 2014