In James Joyce’s stories, they contain epiphanies that portray protagonists’ cruel revelations once they discover the disappointing truth. In Joyce’s short stories, “Araby”, the young boy describes his innocent crush on his friend’s the sister, and his struggle to buy her a gift to express his affection.
The epiphany is introduced by series of paralysis. The boy struggles when he has trouble to express his affection towards his secret admirer. Whenever he encounters her, he is in awe with his lover’s beauty and starts to unconsciously speculates her attractive appearance. When he is having conversation with her, his intense feelings for her unable him to talk properly. He finds himself too nervous to convey his feelings for her: “ I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.“ (30) Consequently, he chooses to secretly follow her around. He prefers to gaze upon her through the blinds in order to hide himself secretly. The boy intentionally limits his view by lowering the "blind" until it is only an inch from the window sash. Before his encounter with her at the bazaar, the perspectives he had about this girl were always hindered by darkness and the window blind. Every observations he had about her are vague and discrete. He could only closely contemplate on the detailed fragments about her, but unable to have a thorough and complete view. In his mind, she only appeared to him as a “brown figure” and the “brown-clad figure”, and it was the small details of her that trigger his intense affection for her.
His superficial and limited perspective reach to a moment of epiphany, when he discovers that the truth is different that the expectations he had about her. In the story, he beautified her with angelic qualities: “The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the rail. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.” (32) He expected her to have innocent and saint-like personality; which results him to break into disappointment when he overheard her flirtatious conversation with the soldiers at the bazaar. After he discovered her inappropriate action, he comes to a sudden realization of his affection for this woman was foolish and innocent. The epiphany leads him to end his love with despair,“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (33). He simply gives up buying her a gift, and his devotion of love for her is shattered. Once he is not blind anymore and realize her true personality, he can not bear the cruel disappointment and break into tears.
In Kafka’s Metamorphasis, Gregor Samsa experiences paralysis after he is transformed into a giant dung beetle. In my previous blog, I point out Gregor’s movement is limited when he is not used to his new body form, “Gregor find his transformed body difficult to adjust: he spends great time and effort in getting himself up and out of bed. Here is one of his attempts to leave his bed but he falls on the ground instead…” Because of his concern for his family, he decides to hide away in his bedroom to avoid frightening his family member. However, he reaches a cruel epiphany when he realizes that not only his family did not appreciate his effort but they also view him as a burden in his family. His epiphany is mostly influenced by Gregor’s sister, Grete. He used to believe that his sister is the only person that cares about him in the family; however, at the end, she turns cold and selfish, and she even propose to the family to get rid of him. The revelation leads to the huge disappointment, which finally kills him.
The epiphany of both stories are similar. Both protagonists are self-absorbed in their own realm, forming wrong expectations and faulty assumptions that ultimately leads to a huge disappointment. Because of their blind expectations, they volunteer to limit themselves and work hard to achieve their goals. However, at the end of both stories, they reach to the epiphanies and realize all their effort spent are useless and even frowned upon.
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The martyrdom qualities of Gregor are unhealthy and establishing a comparison with the main character in Araby is good. Although, Gregor's paralysis does come in the form of being changed into an insect like being, his epiphany is never experienced. Gregor lives his life loving his family till the point of his death, if he were to have an epiphany he would have not stayed to wither away in the lonely premises of his room.
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