Defined by Merriam-Webster, an epiphany is: a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking; an illuminating discovery; a revealing scene or moment. The term “epiphany” is used as a revelation in James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. This process of revelation through thought and action is imperative both for the reader and for Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.
Stephen’s epiphany begins on a visit to the beach when he falls asleep. When he wakes up he immediately sees a beautiful girl standing several yards away, gazing at some distant object over the water. James Joyce writes, “She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beaut
reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race" (253). It seems that Stephen will at last be able to break free of all the restrictions that have prevented his "flight".
In the conclusion of Portrait, the reader is at last in Stephen's mind, removed from the narrator, through a series of random journal entries indicating yet another epiphany Stephen has. Joyce writes, “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the
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