HISS Volume 4 Issue 8 Pages 2899-2932

)2024( ‫ يناير‬8 ‫ عدد‬4 ‫مجلد‬ ‫مجلة المعهد العالي للدراسات النوعية‬
'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

Hosseini's The Kite Runner
‫"لحظة التنوير" كأحد سمات الحداثة فى رواية خالد حسينى‬
"‫" عداء الطائرة الورقية‬
1 ‫الدوى‬ ‫دينا عبد الرحمن عبد الخالق‬

[email protected]
Abstract:
The objective of this research is to investigate epiphany as a
feature of modernism in the light of two pioneers: Virginia Woolf
and James Joyce. This feature will be applied on the characters of
Khalid Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner. The points that will be
elaborated in this paper are (1) what is epiphany? (2) Who is the
founder of this literary term? (3) Epiphanies: James Joyce and
Virginia Woolf. (4) Types of Epiphanies (5) Epiphanic
Characteristics (6) Epiphanies in The Kite Runner.
Key words: epiphany, modernism, Types of epiphany, stages of

epiphany, Epiphanic Characteristics, Khalid Hosseini, The Kite
Runner
‫ مدرس بجامعة األهرام الكندية‬- ‫ دكتوراه فى اللغويات والترجمة‬- 1

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Modern fiction appeared at the beginning of the 20th century

and prevailed during the 30s of the 20th century in English
literature. It was a movement of experiments in new technique in
writing characterized by the “stream of consciousness”. The
striking feature of The Kite Runner is its giving precedence to the
depiction of the characters mental and emotional reactions to
external events, rather than the events themselves. In doing so, the
novelist abandoned the conventional usages of realistic plot
structure, characterization, description, and their works became
successions of “fleeting images of the external world with
thoughts, half-thoughts and shadows of thought attached to the
immediate present or moving back and forth in memory”
(LIU,1993).
An epiphany (from the ancient Greek, epiphaneia,

"manifestation, striking appearance") is an experience of sudden
and striking realization. Generally, the term is used to describe
scientific breakthrough, religious or philosophical discoveries, but
it can be applied on any situation in which an enlightening
realization allows a problem or a situation to be understood from
a new deeper perspective.
An epiphany is variously described as “a moment of sudden

and great revelation or realization” (oxforddictionaries.com), “a
flash of recognition in which someone or something is seen in a

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new light “(Nordquist, 1903), “momentary manifestations of

significance in ordinary experience” (Nichols 1) or “a sudden
sense of radiance and revelation that one may feel while
perceiving a commonplace object . . . The sudden flare into
revelation of an ordinary object or scene” (Abrams, 1993, p.57).
In Lord Jim, Conrad defines epiphany as “one of those

rare moments of awakening [in which] everything [occurs] in a
flash “(Langbaum, 1999, p.42). Woolf refers to it as “little daily
miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark”.
Epiphanies are usually associated with the result of a process

of significant labor, intensive study, or intense experience.
Though the experience itself may appear to be a sudden, out-of-
the-blue, flash of insight, it will more often than not happen at the
end of a period of prolonged effort (Berkun, 2015, p.10).
Epiphanies are relatively rare occurrences and generally

follow a process of significant thought about a problem. Often,
they are triggered by a new and key piece of information, but
importantly, a depth of prior knowledge is required to allow the
leap of understanding.
When we think of epiphanies, principally, James Joyce is the

first who comes to mind. Yet, Joyce may have coined this term he
is not alone in having Epiphanic experiences, nor was he the first

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to use them. Indeed, Joyce's word was even anticipated by the

American writer Emerson, who employed it in a lecture of 19
December 1838: 'a fact is an Epiphany of God and on every facet
of his life man should rear a temple of wonder and joy.
It was James Joyce who looked at epiphany as a secular

term. Joyce was interested in, dramatic, sudden and remarkable
moments which seemed to have raising significance and to be
surrounded with a kind of charming aura. The famous reference is
in Ulysses, when Stephen Daedalus is thinking to himself:
"Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply

deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the
world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there
after a few thousand years..."
The concept of the Joycean epiphany was first outlined in

Stephen Hero (the early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man), when a casual incident in St., Dublin strikes
Stephen. He collected many such moments together in a book of
epiphanies. By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual
manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or
in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was
for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme
care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and
evanescent of moments. (Joyce, 1996).

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The epiphany as an aesthetic category: Joyce began to jot

down little character-revealing dialogues and various impressions,
which he tried to perfect and rework into prose poems, sometimes
spending a whole day in agitation writing half a page. This
composite manuscript he called ―Epiphanies. An intrinsic
duplicity characterizes the word ―epiphany, which indicates both
any text included in Joyce‘s homonymous collection and an
abstract theoretical concept in fact, the term can refer to an idea of
poetic revelation which occurs in everyday trivial situations and is
worded through the often babbling utterances of common spoken
language . It is not possible to provide a description of Joyce's
theoretical notion of epiphany without encountering major
difficulties, since the available documentation on this subject
provides scarce information. (Natali, 2004, p.2)
From 1900 onwards Joyce produced 71 epiphanies, of which

40 have survived in manuscripts at Cornell University and the
University of Buffalo in the United States. These have been
reprinted by Richard Ellmann, A. Walton Litz and John Whittier-
Ferguson in James Joyce: Poems and Shorter Writings (Faber and
Faber, 1991). The different kinds are represented. Some are snap-
shots of real life, mini-dramas that encapsulate banality and
vulgarity; in others, elevated thoughts or perceptions occur in
banal surroundings, and are so powerful and so indicative of some

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higher reality that they take on the character of mystical vision.

Some epiphanies are less spectacularly revelatory and significant,
but they are harmoniously beautiful, as is this one (Richards-the
English Review, 1991)
Joyce was the first to reintroduce the term epiphany into the
modern vernacular using it to describe the sudden and profound
insights of Stephen Daedalus- the central character of Joyce's
book A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man (Joyce, 1916).
Joyce believed that artists used their insight into the events of
daily life, by transmuting them into a celebration of humanity
(Beja, 1993, P.71). What was distinctive about Joyce's
contribution to the evolution of the term epiphany was the secular
meaning he gave to it; a meaning that was more closely oriented
to the Greek and Pagan definitions of the term than the divine
meaning it was accorded in Christian mythology (Hayman, 1998).
Back to a literature overview, Denzin defines epiphanies as

interactional moments that leave a mark on people's lives and
have the potential to create transformational experiences for the
person. At their core, epiphanies are existential crises that occur
in those problematic interactional situations where the character
confronts and experiences a crisis- the effects may be both
positive and/or negative.

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Through epiphanies, personal character is manifested and

made apparent; it alters the fundamental meaning structures in a
person's life. They are a catalyst for perceptions of new identity.
These experiences, Denzin notes, always involve painful
emotions and their meaning is always given retrospectively.
Denzin describes four types of epiphanies, the "major',

"the accumulation", the "minor or illuminative" and the "relived":
In the "major" epiphany, an experience shatters a person's life,
and makes it never the same again…The "cumulative" epiphany
occurs as the result of a series of events that have built up in the
person's life …In the "minor or illuminative" epiphany,
underlying tensions and problems a situation or relationship are
revealed …in the relived epiphany, a person relives, or goes
through again, a major turning point moment in his or her life.
Epiphany as a feature of modernism:
Edith Wharton differentiates between two types of

epiphanies: the literary epiphany and the modern epiphany, which
focuses on the materialistic side of aesthetic conception. Wharton
connects between the historical fiction and the modernist one.
James Joyce is the first to give this term a secular meaning.
Epiphany has long been the core of Joycean studies and a
remarkable feature of the modern novel, in authors ranging from
Virginia Woolf to Thomas Wolfe. Modern texts pay a great deal

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of attention on the subjective and the secular in experience, as

well as exerting an effort to find a way to convene the two
together. Both are traits of the alienated modern sensibility and
their separation is at the core of this alienation (Kim, 1950).
The Modern epiphany is harder to fulfill for the modern

authors because, generally, truth is not clearly apparent to the
writer in everyday objects as it was to the poets of earlier periods.
Hence, Joyce’s identification of the epiphany as a manifestation
through “vulgarity of gesture or of speech” -the clearly mundane-,
is alienated from truth to the point of seeming profane.
In Joyce’s technique, epiphany replaces the role carried out

in traditional narrative by the event; the collocations of numerous
textual themes in associative moments are the events of the
mature works, and they are multitudinous. Hence the reader
should take his understanding of epiphany as axiomatic; explicitly
identifying each one by the term “epiphany” would become
excessively redundant.
An epiphany is not necessarily positive or spiritual –

especially not in Joyce. It might be a moment where a person
suddenly has an insight into the insanity and infelicity of their
condition, like a flash of lightening suddenly illuminating how
lost they are. This is the negative epiphany, in the sense meant by
William Burroughs when he described the phrase ‘naked lunch’ in

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his introduction that "The title means exactly what the words
say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is
on the end of every fork." (Kim, 1950).
Positive epiphanies exist in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries

where the writer was overwhelmed by something, and seems to
see in it a ‘point of intersection of the timeless with time’ (as T.S.
Eliot puts it). A thing catches the light, and suddenly seems a
window to eternity.
Ashton Nichols, suggests in his book;" The Poetics of

Epiphany: nineteenth century origins of modern literary moment",
that the main effect on the literary epiphanies of modernism came
on the hands of Wordsworth. He tried in his poetry to capture
what he called ‘spots of time’:
There are in our existence spots of time which with distinct

preeminence retain a fructifying virtue, whence, depressed
by trivial occupations and the round of ordinary intercourse,
our minds especially the imaginative power are nourished
and invisibly repaired such moments chiefly seem to have
their date in our first childhood (Nichols, 1987).
Both D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf also tried to make

the novel an exploration of the folding and unfolding of
consciousness. Sometimes the novelistic epiphany involves a

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sudden sense of a hidden pattern behind the characters’ history –

they run into an old love (as in Dr. Zhivago) or an old enemy (as
Bolkonsky does in War and Peace) and think – why them? Why
now? Is this a coincidence or evidence that our lives are somehow
weaved together, like works of art, if we could but glimpse the
hidden pattern?
By contrast, in the modernist and romantic epiphany ‘the

powerful perceptual experience becomes prime and self-
supporting. Interpretation of the event may be important but it is
always subject to an indefiniteness that does not characterize the
powerful moment itself’, in the words of Ashton Nichols. He goes
on: ‘the visible reveals something invisible but the status of the
invisible component is left unstated. Its mystery becomes part of
the value of the experience.’
There are similarities and differences between Joyce's

"Epiphany" and Woolf's “Moment of Importance". Joyce’s
epiphany and Woolf’s “moment of importance” both are writing
techniques of stream of consciousness in modern fiction. There
are some similarities between them. First of all, both are
artistically designed by their writers to represent the moment of
mental experience. For instance, Little Chandler’s epiphany in
Joyce’s short story A Little Cloud and the sight of the mark in
Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall are deliberately arranged to reveal

2908
characters’ complicated inner thoughts. In addition, both of them

need the impact of the external world or stimulus on the human
mind.
Thirdly, both techniques intend to show rather than to

comment. The writers just present the characters’ thoughts and
emotional reactions but do not make comments on them,
characters are introduced by their own thoughts, words and deeds
but not outright by the authors, which leaves a large space for
readers’ imagination and thinking.
On the other hand, 'epiphany' and 'moment of importance'

have some differences. Firstly, 'epiphany' is closely related to the
plot of the story, while 'moment of importance' embodies the
characteristics of promptness, randomness and fragmentation.
Secondly, in sense of time, 'epiphany' usually marks the

abrupt, sudden climax of the story and when it occurred at the
certain place and time, the story ends suddenly, while 'moment of
importance' often represents a lasting continuous flow of the
character’s inner world. More specifically, the short story A Little
Cloud reaches its climax and ends when Little Chandler found the
truth of his life reality; while the character’s lasting thoughts
centered upon life’s profound, philosophical thinking triggered by
the mark on the wall seems to be interrupted or frustrated in the
end of the story by someone’s conversation and the narrator’s

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realization of the snail. Thirdly, 'epiphany' has a wider social

impact and more profound moral significance while 'moment of
importance' has a narrow and intimate focus on personal
character.
A set of cores epiphanic characteristics were created

throughout content analysis to the epiphanic literature
(Kripendorff, 1980). The six core epiphanic characteristics that
were identified include, 'antecedent state', 'suddenness', 'personal
transformation', ' illumination/ insight', ' meaning –making' and
'enduring nature'.
Epiphanic Characteristics:
Epiphany is an antecedent state that is preceded by periods –

from weeks, months or sometimes years of suffering, conflicts,
anxiety, depression and inner turmoil. Most of times the one who
goes through epiphany always feel painful emotions like
abandonment, regret, anger, loneliness or suicidal ideation and in
some cases all of them. The second feature that epiphanies have is
being sudden; epiphanies are sudden and abrupt, but some types
are featured by slowness and gradualism.
Thirdly, epiphanies are experiences of transformation in

self-identity and profound change. This is the most prominent
feature of the characters who go through epiphanic moments

2910
which led them to view themselves and their world in a different

way. These transformations are varied, for example, discarding
old beliefs, about oneself or about the others. Most of the cases,
these beliefs are based on a new deep understanding, or conscious
recall, or spiritual tranquility.
Furthermore, epiphanies are simultaneous with illumination

and insight due to their being as acute awareness of something
new, something which the individual had been previously blind to
when a character goes through epiphany, he/she experience a
significant insight which affects illuminating elements of self-
identity that had once remained in darkness.
Moreover, epiphanies are profound insights that are figured

significant to the individual's life; it can be called a process of
meaning-making. A process in which individuals feel the
increased value or worth of life, the time that one creates a life
purpose, the phase which forms the linking between childhood
experiences with adult emotions and behaviors and the attribution
of great importance and significant to an event, or a person, or
other life circumstances.
In addition to these features, epiphanies are of enduring

nature, it is a momentary experience, the personal transformation
that brings out lasting and permanent results, and it is a powerful

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new illumination coupled with the significance (meaning)

attached to it.
Epiphanies represent a compromise of one's existential

freedom, leading to a profound re-evaluation of life's projects and
goals that are chosen freely (Heidegger, 1987, p. 154). The kind
of freedom that is an outcome of an epiphany and which is best
described as a newly created courage toward willingness and
openness to reform new natures of self- identity; so that self-
identity is experienced as "being-for-itself" (transcendence), as
opposed to 'being-in-itself' (immanence) (Sartre, 1943, P. 80).
Human beings fight to gain their 'in-itself', however human
consciousness is unable to remain stable. Human beings are
always free to change, so that freedom is equated with uncertainty
(Sartre, 1943, P. 55).
The epiphanic characteristics "illumination/ insight" was

defined before as an acute awareness of something new,
something to which the person had been previously blind to. The
term itself is defined as throwing light upon that which had
previously been in darkness. From a Heideggerian perspective the
persons' epiphanies marked a new freedom toward openness (as
opposed to closeness) and a clarification of their own being, their
physical, social, personal and spiritual world (van Deurzen, 2002,
pp. 62-93). The early stages of the persons' life-stories reveal they

2912
had chosen to eschew their existential freedom. They had become

closed off to the full range of their own possibilities for being and
relating (Craig, 1988, p. 3).
The Kite Runner is a 'bildungsroman' novel, which

means, characters are always in change through their life journey
and go into new realization and see life from different angle. Then
accordingly, they start to meditate everything in deeper
perspective and start to behave in a different way. The Kite
Runner depicts a peculiar form of suffering, which defers the
catharsis typically provoked by narratives focused on the heroic
martyrdom of innocent or helpless victims (Aubrey, 2016). That
is, it explores the guilt of those who are responsible for or
complicit with the victimization of others. As one reader puts it;
while reading this book I wished to scream at the characters in the
book, wished to tell them that they were making the wrong
decision. But then I looked into myself and realized that I would
have made the same wrong decision. At that point my hatred was
toward myself.
Amazon readers proudly announce that the book made them

cry, made them nauseated, made them lose sleep, made them feel
beaten up? All of which suggest an intense bodily form of
identification with Amir. "There were times I hated reading this
book. I went days feeling physically sick from the story". "The

2913
emotions are so deep and raw; I can't really go into it. This book
is filled with such unspeakable sadness. Amir's guilt turned me
into an insomniac-I was Amir. I felt all the pain and betrayal. I
was Hassan. I was destroyed, elated, torn in two by the powerful
emotions in this book"(Aubry, 2016, pp. 25-43).
Since the main purpose of this research is to acquaint the

reader with a version of each of the protagonists' life stories. Each
is presented in chronological order (i.e. childhood, adolescence,
and adulthood) providing an outline of the protagonist's life up to
the end of the novel and their most meaningful experiences
(epiphanies) as they saw it during each stage. Each of the life
stories then culminates with the protagonist's epiphanies, and the
positive changes and transformation that occurred as a result.
The main characters in the novel suffer a powerful moment

of epiphany. The Kite Runner is divided into three sections. The
first part of the story takes place in Kabul. Amir, the main
character and the narrator of the novel, describes his childhood in
the early to mid-1970s and, especially, his relationship with
Hassan. This section includes the pivotal event of the narration.
The second section begins in 1981 after Amir and his father leave
Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. This part of the novel
takes place in Fremont, California, a city south of San Francisco
in the East Bay. Here, they live as part of an immigrant. This

2914
section ends with the marriage of Amir to Thoraya and the death
of Amir’s father in 1989.
In the final section of the novel in 2001, Amir returns back

to Afghanistan. This circular structure of the novel is a feature of
modernist writings. The events end where it began from.
Hosseini's character leaves home by choice, and between leaving
and being back, many events lead to the character's
transformation. In The Kite Runner, Amir must leave with his
father in the wake of the Soviet invasion, but this departure allows
him to leave his past behind him and indirectly gives him a
chance to begin anew. He is able to follow his own interests and
ambitions in a new culture more friendly to his ambitions and to
renew his relationship with his father.
The opening paragraph of "The Kite Runner" already

expresses one of the main causes of epiphany; that is guilt. Amir,
the main character, is perpetually confronted by guilt. It is almost
the end of the childhood phase in which Amir's character will
change accordingly. These details are the accumulative childhood
events that lead to the big moment of epiphany later in the novel
after Amir grows up and learn more about Hassan's devotion and
loyalty, even after being far apart from each other.
There is a strong relationship between guilt and epiphany

because one way or another, these suppressed feelings of remorse

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and redemption will lead one day to take an action weather

deliberate or spontaneous one. There will be a reflection of these
inside feelings in the human behavior. And this is what typically
happened in Amir's case.
The details of Amir’s life, whether joyful or sorrowful are,

once again, as in his adolescence, dwarfed by events in
Afghanistan. Amir and Thoraya celebrate his first novel as they
struggle to have a child. In the third section of the novel which
begins in June 2001, Amir receives a phone call from Rahim
Khan- his father's closest friend-. Rahim Khan begins to tell Amir
about Hassan; Amir knew about how far Hassan kept loyal and
loving to him even after being apart from each other. This was left
in Hassan's letters to Amir in which he tells some of his own story
in three letters that he has written to Amir and given to Rahim
Khan to deliver. They are murdered by the Taliban, who take over
the house and send their son Sohrab to an orphanage. Rahim
Khan tells Amir that one of the reasons he has asked him to come
to Pakistan is that he wants Amir to go to Kabul to find Sohrab.
Amir says that he cannot possibly go; he cannot risk everything.
As much as people enjoy routine, stability and predictability,

they also expect their lives to change as well. Human lives are
always in transition, however "some transitions, some periods of
change, stand out as especially significant in the life-course. Amir

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is in a moment of crucial choice between being having a wife and

stable life in America and to free his inner guilt towards Hassan.
He has to do this. This is exactly what Hassan has done for Amir
even in his final act. Rahim Khan is angry with Amir knowing all
that Hassan has done and suffered for Amir and his family. In a
new moment of realization, it is at this point that he tells Amir
that Hassan is Baba’s son. Rahim Khan enlightened the darkness
that Amir lived in all these years. He revealed the truth that has
been hidden for years. He removed the dust of the buried truth.
Amir is furious with his father for this deception and blames
Rahim Khan for not telling him earlier.
This is Amir's epiphany; A side from being one of the most

important plot moments in the novel, this is his moment of a new
realization, the moment of knowing how long he had been
deceived by his father. He wonders how he had not noticed all the
clues suggested that Hassan was his half-brother. He wonders
how his father could have lied to him and to Hassan all these
years. It is much ironic now when he recalls his father's saying
about sin. He told him that the only sin in life is theft and that
lying is stealing someone's right to know the truth:" there is only
one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation
of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life... you steal his
wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you

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tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat,
you steal the right to fairness... there is no act more wretched than
stealing.”
Epiphanies are experiences that reveal one's terrifying

freedom, giving essence to life (Sartre, 1948) and offering insight
into the inter-relationship between inauthentic and authentic
modes of self-identity. This creates a tension between two polar
opposites, which van Deurzen (2002, p.55) claims "supplies the
very energy of life". When a person experiences an epiphany,
they encounter the conditions of existence and come to see their
own inner condition as thrown (Heidegger, 1927).
This "cumulative" epiphany occurs as the result of a series

of events that have built up Amir's epiphany. This moment of
sudden shocking truth about his father. His father had dishonored
his best friend Ali as well. Amir also realizes a very bad truth that
is: Like father, like son, he himself more like his father. He
betrayed the person who was most loyal to him. He thinks of how
different Ali's and Hassan's lives could have been if Amir had not
betrayed them. May be baba have brought them to the United
States and may this could save them from death in Afghanistan.
Regret is a conscious negative emotional reaction to past

actions or lack thereof. Regret differs from disappointment: regret
is an outcome of actions, while disappointment is born from the

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outcomes. Guilt is a deep regret for actions because they fell short
of our own moral standards. Guilt is a prerequisite for remorse,
which is more mature and proactive than guilt in that it also
involves an impulse for repentance and reparation. (Burton,
2014). After thinking everything over, Amir realizes that his
actions have had a grave effect on Hassan’s life. He now thinks of
Hassan as his brother and he recalls the unqualified love Hassan
has given him. Amir thinks about his father’s desire for him to
stand up for something and to do his own fighting and realizes
that this is the time to do it. He returns to Rahim Khan’s house
and tells him that he is going to Kabul to find Sohrab.
Amir keeps dreaming of Hassan every now and then. He is

always in his mind and thoughts. He bears the burden of guilt
towards Hassan inside him. Amir struggles with daily flashbacks,
reminding him of what a good friend Hassan was and how he
betrayed him, “The bear roars, or maybe it’s Baba. Spittle and
blood fly; claw and hand swipe. They fall to the ground with a
loud thud and Baba is sitting on the bear’s chest, his fingers in his
snout. He looks up at me and I see. He’s me. I am wrestling the
bear” (295). The bear in Amir’s dream symbolizes his guilt of
betrayal of witnessing this horrid event that he had the power to
stop. Now that Baba is gone, Amir is left to wrestle the bear on

2919
his own and hopefully come out on top. Amir is utterly alone on
his quest and he must continue to fight to make things right.
Now as epiphany always change person's life into new

perception and new attitudes weather negative or positive. In
Amir's case, he changed positively and tries to find a way to be
good again through finding Hassan's son. Rahim Khan’s reminder
to Amir that there is a way “to be good again”, and the way this
edict becomes Amir’s mission in the novel, reflects not just an
individual dilemma that the “universal” reader can identify with,
but the way in which “goodness” and “humanity” become
imbricated in the politics of the familiar and the modern.
Specifically, it reflects Mahmood Mamdani’s recent engagement
with how race, nation, and/or religion, as essentialized difference,
may be transcended through the demarcation of an individual as
“good”. (Jefferess, 1879, 395)
Amir’s one last shot at redemption is to rescue Hassan’s son,

Sohrab, from an orphanage in Afghanistan. While searching for
Sohrab, Farid tells him that it is best to forget his past since
nothing from it has survived. Amir said," I don’t want to forget
anymore," he is ready to face his past and make up for his former
actions and behavior by helping Hassan's son. Amir realizes that
this is his one last gift that Hassan has placed before is his one last
shot at redemption and he accepts the offer. If not for Amir’s

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guilty conscious, he might never have had the ambition to travel

back to his war-torn country in search of a boy that was not his, it
was just not his nature, but because of the guilt that he still had he
took up the offer and stepped back into Afghanistan, the origin of
his guilt and haunting flashbacks.
Foster wrote, “The quest consists of five things: (a) a

quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d)
challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there”
(3). We have our (a) quester: Amir. He must, (b), travel to
Afghanistan. He must save his half-brother’s son, Sohrab, who is
a victim of child trafficking. He (d) faces an initially unwilling
companion, Farid, the dangerous Taliban and an unpredictable
Assef.
He is remembering what he did in his past versus what he

should do, and acting on this realization. Assef badly beats Amir,
and in this particular moment, Amir feels healed although he is
ironically being beaten terribly. “My body was broken—just how
badly I wouldn’t find out until later—but I felt healed. "Healed at
last”. (Hosseini, 2003, 289). Amir is finally being punished and
getting what he deserved. The monumental moment took place
during the fight is the end: Sohrab stands up for Amir just like his
father did many years ago. This gives Amir some clarity and
redemption from his guilt.

2921
His character is different now; he – without thinking- tells

Sohrab that he and Hassan are brothers. He is not hiding anything
anymore. Once Sohrab recovers physically and Amir safely
brings him to America, He sees the Hassan he saw after the rape:
the sunken eyes and tired face, silent, and constantly sleeping or
keeping to himself.
Amir sees a man selling kites, and immediately is back in

the kite flying days of his childhood. He buys one and asks
Sohrab to join him, and to his surprise Sohrab accepts the offer.
Amir and Sohrab cut another kite and Amir is brought back into
that day in the winter of 1975 before the rape: the triumph,
victory, happiness, and glory. He is brought back to the day that
changed the course of his entire life. Sohrab smiles, which means
everything to Amir. He now has the choice of what to do: he can
redeem himself of his previous actions or be the person he was.
He decides to be the person he should have been. He runs the kite
for Sohrab, telling him “For you, a thousand times over”.
It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything

all right. It didn’t make anything all right …But I’ll take it.
With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the
snow one flake at a time and maybe I just witnessed the first
flake melting. I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of
screaming children. But I didn’t care. I ran with the wind

2922
blowing in my face and a smile as wide as the Valley of

Panjsher on my lips…I ran” (Hosseini, 2003, 371).
This closing passage shows the progress Sohrab and Amir

are making. The snow melting symbolizes the hardship for
Sohrab and the wall he has put up from others. The snow is being
melted by spring coming, the start of a relationship between Amir
and Sohrab. Amir is running for Sohrab like Hassan ran for him.
He is giving Sohrab the love he should have given Hassan.
Although it does not make Amir’s sins and regrets disappear, it
gives him some clarity and a feeling of redemption. He is being
the person he should have been throughout his entire childhood
and life.
The Amir we knew in the beginning of the novel is a

completely different Amir by the conclusion. The guilt he lived
with for all those years helped to transform him into a different
person and allowed for him to find a way to become good again
(Hosseini, 2003, 168) on his journey towards redemption.
This is how Amir found his way to be good again after all
these years of redemption and feeling guilty. Finally, he had a
transformation in his character to be better than he was in the
beginning of the novel. It is evident now that it is a
bildungsroman novel. The bildungsroman, however, has as a focal
point, the development of the main character from childhood to

2923
maturity of mind and body. To gain this maturity, the character

may leave home and family, learn about him- or herself through
the experiences that life provides, rather than through formal
schooling, and then return with newly acquired wisdom.
Without the sense of guilt that Amir and Baba felt, they
would not have been determined to achieve what they did in their
lives. Baba would not have tried to be the best, attempting to hide
his moral sin under the extravagance of his good deeds, and Amir
would not have gone back into Afghanistan to save a young boy.
Without guilt, there would have been no reason for these two men
to go up against the odds, to help others less fortunate than
themselves, and to put their lives on the line for the well-being of
others.
These feelings of remorse led to the change that follows

epiphany. i.e., every epiphany is preceded by the following: (1)
conflict (2) complication and obstacles are faced (3) confusion (4)
crisis (5) Compliance (6) Comprehension (7) Catharsis (8) Clarity
(9) Change (10) Consequences (11) Construction and finally (12)
conclusion. Therefore, the character that lives epiphany forms
his/her new identity step by step, he/she moves from strength to
strength to reaching a defining point of self-actualization, to a
better degree of self-knowledge, a crucial personal battle has been
won and is better prepared for the next (Schouten, 2014, 31).

2924
An epiphany is a rewarding experience precisely because we

never know how and when it will happen, or whether we will be
rewarded for our efforts; it is not the predictable and calculable
result of a conscious process of reflection and consideration.
Amir's epiphany is an accumulative one, he endured all these
years. Hosseini ends his novel on a positive note assuring the idea
that after epiphany, a transformation happened.
The bildungsroman is the name affixed to those novels that

concentrate on the development or education of a central
character. This genre intends to lead the reader to greater personal
enrichment as the protagonist journeys from youth to
psychological or emotional maturity. The protagonist's adventures
can be seen as a quest for the meaning of life or as a vehicle for
the author’s social and moral opinions as demonstrated through
the protagonist.
Referring to the description of bildungsroman, it becomes

evident how Hosseini’s novel fit into this rubric. the character
reaches transformation and maturity throughout the events; and
does not stay the same character. The novel is about self-
development and epiphanic experiences.
At the end, The Kite Runner end on mixed notes. The

chance of happiness is evident, but the characters have so much to

2925
overcome to reach that happiness. For Amir, his happiness is tied

up in Sohrab’s well-being.
Conclusion:
It was perhaps Charles Taylor who first identified

modernism as an epiphanic philosophical moment in the
discourse of modernity. Instead of focusing on the accepted
history of modernism as a reaction to the crisis of modernity and
the rejection of its established doctrines on such important issues
as the idea of unitary self, identity, time consciousness and
instrumental reason, Taylor concluded Source of the Self with the
claim that modernism represented the epiphany of modernity –its
moment of revelation and insight (Doyle, 2013, p. 32).
Taylor's radical assertion was that epiphany was itself a sign

of newness of modernism, of its accounting for the gap between
the objects of modern life and existing conventions of
representation that were found inadequate. As the basis for "non-
representational art," Taylor argued, modernism was the European
artist's search for a new way of accounting for experiences that
could not be reflected through "the surface of ordinary things";
the epiphanic was the mode of recuperating "something only
indirectly available, something the visible subject can't say itself
but only nudges us towards" (469). Accordingly, Taylor argued,
modernism arose in response to a problem that had to come to

2926
haunt the culture of (European) modernity in the nineteenth

century: how to achieve" a kind of unmediated contact with the
fullness of life"(469)
By its very nature, modernism sought to promote ideas

about culture and forms of representation at odds with what
Taylor called "the deadening, routinized, conventional forms of
instrumental civilization"(469). But what exactly was involved in
this deployment of an epiphanic moment was very much a matter
of debate: "Did it mean simply throwing off the old forms and
achieving a kind of unmediated contact with the fullness of
life?"(469) or was the epiphanic a continuation of older forms of
social mediation?
Taylor's conclusion, derived from a careful reading of the

artistic philosophies of a range of early –twentieth-century writers
and artists, including James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, was that modernism
sought the inner depths of life through something that comes
"close to merging with the other"(471). What the other was for the
modernists – and for us- continues to be one of the most vexing
questions in the study of modern culture and its aesthetic
ideology .
In order to analyze the protagonist's epiphanies, the

narrative approach was the best methodology with an initial
theoretical introduction to the feature of epiphany. Understanding

2927
epiphanies from a narrative perspective enabled a temporal

understanding of the phenomenon which provided a deeper and
fuller account of the protagonists' epiphanies and its impact on
their lives. The chapter went through details to bring greater
clarity and understanding to each epiphany. With testing the set of
core epiphanic characteristics developed in the beginning of that
chapter with the actual epiphanies contained in the life-story of
the hero in The Kite Runner, revealing a high level of support
and evidence for the six core epiphanic characteristics.
The protagonist experienced a period of depression, anxiety

and inner turmoil prior to his epiphanies. He acknowledged and
encountered the condition of existence of (freedom,
responsibility, choice, time, meaning and death) which provided
the impetus for re-appraisal and questioning of his basic
assumptions, values and beliefs. This period was characterized by
intense, by reflection and introspection, during which, he began to
piece together the various unconnected and disparate elements of
his life, when suddenly and abruptly he summoned a powerful
new insight or perspective into consciousness. This was triggered
by a range of occurrences that include a chance to encounter with
a significant person, a dream containing a symbolic encounter,
feelings of great frustration, incarceration, and the reminder of
one's childhood vulnerability and innocence.

2928
The protagonist's analysis and reflection on their situation

in the world, and the final profound insight or change in
perspective (the epiphany), enabled him to make vital connections
between the disparate elements of his life. This brought unity,
purpose and meaning out of the chaos and meaninglessness of
existence.
The protagonist's new insight and perspective also had the

effect of illuminating areas of life that had once remained in
darkness. So momentous was this experience that is precipitated a
resolute decision to change the way they viewed himself and his
world. The highly significant nature of the new insight and the
resultant decision to transform meant that each protagonist
believed that it was no longer possible to continue living the way
they had. This momentous insight, or change in perspective, set
him on a new path from which he felt there was no turning back.

2929
References:
Aubry, Timothy. (2016). Reading as Therapy: What

Contemporary Fiction Does for Middle-Class Americans.
Iowa City, US: University of Iowa Press, 2006. ProQuest
ebrary.
Bloom, Harold. (2009). Bloom's Guides: Khaled Hosseini's The

Kite Runner. Bloom's Literary Criticism.
Boheemen-Saaf, Christine van. (1999). “Epiphany and

Postcolonial Affect”. In Moments of Moment Aspects of
the Literary Epiphany. Ed. Wim Tigges. Amsterdam:
Editions Rodopi.
-Bradbury, Malcolm; Fletcher, John. (1976). "The Introverted

Novel," in Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, ed.,
Modernism, 1890-1930 (Harmondsworth Eng.: Penguin
Books.
Bradbury, Malcolm; McFarlane, James (1976). The Name and

Nature of Modernism, in Bradbury and McFarlane (eds.),
Modernism: A Guide to European Literature1890-1930,
Harmondsworth Penguin.
Bradshaw, David. (2003). A Concise Companion to Modernism.

Blackwell Publishing LTD.

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Castle, Gregory. (2008). "Reading the Modernist

Bildungsroman", Vol. 45, No. 2.
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Rutledge.
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Winding Passage: Essays and Sociological journeys, Ι960-
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Philosophical And Psychological Inquiry".
Hendry, Irene. (1946). “Joyce’s Epiphanies”. Sewanee Review,

LIV , 449-67: 461
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Levitt, Heidi et al. (2004). “The Transformational Experience of

Insight: A Life-Changing Event, Journal of Constructivist
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2932

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)2024( ‫ يناير‬8 ‫ عدد‬4 ‫مجلد‬ ‫مجلة المعهد العالي للدراسات النوعية‬

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

1 ‫الدوى‬ ‫دينا عبد الرحمن عبد الخالق‬

Key words: epiphany, modernism, Types of epiphany, stages of

‫ مدرس بجامعة األهرام الكندية‬- ‫ دكتوراه فى اللغويات والترجمة‬- 1

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

Modern fiction appeared at the beginning of the 20th century

An epiphany (from the ancient Greek, epiphaneia,

An epiphany is variously described as “a moment of sudden

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

new light “(Nordquist, 1903), “momentary manifestations of

In Lord Jim, Conrad defines epiphany as “one of those

Epiphanies are usually associated with the result of a process

Epiphanies are relatively rare occurrences and generally

When we think of epiphanies, principally, James Joyce is the

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

to use them. Indeed, Joyce's word was even anticipated by the

It was James Joyce who looked at epiphany as a secular

"Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply

The concept of the Joycean epiphany was first outlined in

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

The epiphany as an aesthetic category: Joyce began to jot

From 1900 onwards Joyce produced 71 epiphanies, of which

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

higher reality that they take on the character of mystical vision.

Back to a literature overview, Denzin defines epiphanies as

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

Through epiphanies, personal character is manifested and

Denzin describes four types of epiphanies, the "major',

Epiphany as a feature of modernism:

Edith Wharton differentiates between two types of

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

of attention on the subjective and the secular in experience, as

The Modern epiphany is harder to fulfill for the modern

In Joyce’s technique, epiphany replaces the role carried out

An epiphany is not necessarily positive or spiritual –

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

Positive epiphanies exist in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries

Ashton Nichols, suggests in his book;" The Poetics of

There are in our existence spots of time which with distinct

Both D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf also tried to make

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

sudden sense of a hidden pattern behind the characters’ history –

By contrast, in the modernist and romantic epiphany ‘the

There are similarities and differences between Joyce's

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

characters’ complicated inner thoughts. In addition, both of them

Thirdly, both techniques intend to show rather than to

On the other hand, 'epiphany' and 'moment of importance'

Secondly, in sense of time, 'epiphany' usually marks the

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

realization of the snail. Thirdly, 'epiphany' has a wider social

A set of cores epiphanic characteristics were created

Epiphany is an antecedent state that is preceded by periods –

Thirdly, epiphanies are experiences of transformation in

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

which led them to view themselves and their world in a different

Furthermore, epiphanies are simultaneous with illumination

Moreover, epiphanies are profound insights that are figured

In addition to these features, epiphanies are of enduring

'Epiphany' as a Feature of Modernism in Khaled

new illumination coupled with the significance (meaning)

Epiphanies represent a compromise of one's existential