Epiphany that epiphany is nothing.

As a STEM student who attends the literature class, there are so many words that are hard to understand each time. From various literary terms to grasping the author's intentions, many parts do not feel natural and are difficult to understand. And I thought about what I could write and decided to write about epiphany. Because in many of the works that I've been studying these days, epiphany is also the one that has put the most effort into understanding, I thought there could be something that only I could write about.

           “An epiphany is an experience of a sudden and striking realization. Generally the term is used to describe scientific breakthrough, religious or philosophical discoveries, but it can apply in any situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective.” This is how epiphany is defined by Wikipedia. Simply redefining it, I think I can define it as a valuable impression from nothing (Some trivial, daily events.). And James Joyce is a writer who has been at the vanguard of the popularization of such an epiphany. “The Joycean epiphany” has been defined as "a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether from some object, scene, event, or memorable phase of the mind — the manifestation being out of proportion to the significance or strictly logical relevance of whatever produces it.”

           And when I was reading story “The Dead,” it was even clearer. He normally has an ordinary characters go through a revelation. And this case, Gabriel is one of the most obvious characters. His one slowly begins when he and his wife Gretta leaves the party house. And when they arrive, Gretta is somewhat disgusted and get stressed by her routine life or her marriage itself. And doubts about essence of their marriage might be full of phony. Even in the party, everything is routine and boring. Same meals, same music, and same peoples hang around and irritate somebody. And during the conversation, Gretta is remembering a song sung by D’arcy, which made her cry when they arrived at the hotel. At first, Gabriel was angry at her, but after listening to her story, he gets somewhat enlightened.

           Staring outside the window, he acknowledges that their marriage has become passionless and even numb. Snowing outside, even emphasizes the coldness which has paralysis like effect on the whole Ireland.

           But what I thought was that this epiphany doesn’t only works on Gabriel himself, but it is message of James Joyce towards the whole Ireland. Routine paralysis and superficial relationships which consists of complex business relationships make Ireland dying and dull.

           To be honest, I still don't know why this concept is necessary. I know what this means, but I still don't know if it means anything more than just enlightening characters. In that sense, however, it seems certain that James Joyce is an excellent writer. I think I got an epiphany that epiphany is nothing more… It's a little personal, but this is what I felt as I read “The Dead” and James Joyce's works!

the video is the recent song named "old town road" which is mixture of country music and hip-hop. And to me, it was sort of epiphany that let me reconsider about what is hip-hop. (Hope you enjoy. The song is pretty awesome.)