Unit 7 · Topic 7.1

7.1 Change and epiphany

Characters can change slowly over a story or all at once. Change usually grows out of a conflict of values or a shift in the character's situation. An epiphany is a sudden moment of understanding, and it can push a character to act, change direction or see their whole situation differently.

Key terms

epiphany
dynamic character
static character
conflict of values
turning point

How change happens

In short fiction, there isn't much room for slow development, so change often happens fast. Look for the cause. Most changes come from one of two sources. The first is a conflict of values, when what a character believes runs into something that challenges it. The second is a change in circumstances, like a death, a move, a loss of money or a piece of news.

A dynamic character changes in an important way; a static character doesn't. Neither is better. A character who refuses to change despite everything can say as much about a story's meaning as one who transforms.

Epiphany: a sudden flash of understanding

An epiphany is a moment when a character suddenly sees the truth about themselves or their situation. James Joyce made the term famous in fiction, and many stories in his collection Dubliners (1914) build to one. An epiphany is often quiet. Nothing dramatic happens outside the character; everything happens inside.

An epiphany can lead a character to act, or it can leave them frozen with a new, painful knowledge. Either way, it usually comes near the end, and it often changes how you read everything before it.

Examples to compare

Story	What triggers the change	What the character realizes or does
Araby (Joyce, 1914)	A boy finally reaches the bazaar he dreamed about and finds it closing and ordinary	He sees his romantic quest as vanity and feels anguish and anger
The Story of an Hour (Chopin, 1894)	News of her husband's death	Louise Mallard realizes she will now be free to live for herself
The Wife of His Youth (Chesnutt, 1898)	A woman from his enslaved past appears at his door	Mr. Ryder chooses to acknowledge her publicly instead of proposing to the refined widow he had planned to marry
The Garden Party (Mansfield, 1922)	Seeing the body of a poor neighbor who died that morning	Laura glimpses something about life and death she can't put into words

How to write about change

Show the before and the after, then name the cause. A strong claim explains what the change means: what the character gains or loses, and what idea the story is exploring through that change.

Pay attention to the language of the moment itself. Writers often mark an epiphany with images of light, sight or darkness, or with a sudden shift in sentence rhythm.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Analyzing an epiphany
The last sentence of Joyce's "Araby" reads: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." Just before this, the boy hears a voice announce "that the light was out." Explain how this ending shows a change in the narrator.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Recall the before: the boy has idealized a neighbor's sister and imagines himself on a romantic quest to bring her a gift from the bazaar.
2. Step 2: Identify the trigger: he arrives late, the stalls are closing, and he overhears a trivial, flirting conversation at a stall. The magic he expected isn't there.
3. Step 3: Read the language: "I saw myself" marks sudden self-knowledge. "Driven and derided" means pushed along and mocked, so he feels both foolish and powerless. The light going out turns his loss of illusion into an image.
4. Step 4: Name the change and its meaning: he moves from romantic fantasy to harsh self-judgment.
Answer: Sample answer: The ending turns a story about a boy's crush into a story about the end of illusion. As the hall goes dark, the narrator says, "I saw myself," a phrase that marks the first time he looks at himself instead of at his idealized image of the girl. What he sees is "a creature driven and derided by vanity": his quest, which seemed noble, now looks like self-flattery. The darkness outside matches the darkness of his new understanding, and the burning "anguish and anger" suggest that growing up, in this story, feels less like gaining wisdom than like losing a dream.

Common mistakes

Saying a character "changes" without naming the specific before and after.
Calling any decision an epiphany. An epiphany is a sudden realization, not just a choice.
Ignoring the cause. Explain what conflict or change in circumstances produced the change.

On the exam

Multiple-choice questions often ask what a character's final realization suggests, or how a late detail changes the meaning of earlier ones. Reread the ending for words of seeing, knowing or realizing.
In the prose fiction essay, passages often end on a moment of change. Analyzing how the language marks that moment is a strong way to structure your essay.

Connected topics

Videos

Character change | Reading | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Ending Explained! James Joyce's "Araby"
Oxford CommaWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
English Professor Explains Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” Analysis with Subtitles #ICSE 💍
Dr. Whitney KostersWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Dynamic Characters: Why do they change?
ELA Through FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 7.1 Change and epiphany. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.

Gurov was Moscow born; he arrived in Moscow on a fine frosty day, and when he put on his fur coat and warm gloves, and walked along Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of the bells, his recent trip and the places he had seen lost all charm for him. Little by little he became absorbed in Moscow life, greedily read three newspapers a day, and declared he did not read the Moscow papers on principle! He already felt a longing to go to restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, anniversary celebrations, and he felt flattered at entertaining distinguished lawyers and artists, and at playing cards with a professor at the doctors' club. He could already eat a whole plateful of salt fish and cabbage.

In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time would visit him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in his memory as though he had parted with Anna Sergeyevna only the day before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children, preparing their lessons, or when he listened to a song or the organ at the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into dreams, and in his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come. Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw her as though she were living before him, and she seemed to him lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner—he heard her breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched the women, looking for some one like her.

He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And there was nothing for him but to talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only his wife twitched her black eyebrows, and said:

"The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri."

One evening, coming out of the doctors' club with an official with whom he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:

"If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in Yalta!"

The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and shouted:

"Dmitri Dmitritch!"

"What?"

"You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit too strong!"

These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.

Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation. And he had a headache all next day. And the next night he slept badly; he sat up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. He was sick of his children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk of anything.

In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife he was going to Petersburg to do something in the interests of a young friend—and he set off for S——. What for? He did not very well know himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her—to arrange a meeting, if possible.

Anton Chekhov, "The Lady with the Dog" (1899), Part III, translated by Constance Garnett (1917)

Question 1 of 4

Paragraph 3 sets what Gurov “fancied” would happen against what actually happens chiefly to show that

Question 2 of 4

Gurov’s outburst in paragraph 12, “What savage manners, what people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days!”, marks a turning point because

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt’s supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

James Joyce, "The Dead," Dubliners (1914), the story's final paragraphs

Question 3 of 4

In paragraph 3, Gabriel’s realization that “he had never felt like that himself towards any woman” reveals

Question 4 of 4

In paragraph 2, Gabriel’s thought that it is “Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age” shows him

0 of 4 answered