Revelation Revealed

This is a kind of follow-up to my last post, where I think I left my disjointed thesis dangling. I admit I still remain confused, but perhaps I'm a little closer to figuring out this element we call "recognition" or "revelation." I think it has a lot to do with the process of individuation. In fact, I would say that they are interminably linked.

I've been thinking of revelation in terms of the climax of the story. I think I'm a little bit right and a little bit wrong in that assumption. The characters in any given romance have gone through hell and high water and now they're poised to either explode or live happily ever after. Their lives hinge on this tiny moment in their lives in which everything changes - they finally recognize that their blood is royal, that they are richer than kings and that they can marry, or whatever plot line you choose. The point is that I have been thinking of the recognition as a short burst of "ah-ha!"

Quite the contrary! I think that this element deserves a lot more credit. I think that, like individuation, revelation is a process. It must be nurtured and given time to steep. It's true that at the climax it provides a welcome (and necessary) resolution to the tale, but it is not that simple. Or, at least, it shouldn't be. I think that's what separates good and bad romances - the quality of the revelation. Let it build, incubate it throughout the story and only when it is ripe and ready for us to swallow, should the author allow it to be harvested.

It seems to me that revelation is more of a constant element throughout a given story than simply a moment. It is an evolution of the characters and the plot rather than a flash in the pan. I think this element is what gives us the meaning that we want so desperately from literature. And something so important and so complex cannot come out of left field, or we, as the reader, won't think it's genuine.

What is it to know ourselves? The process of individuation through revelation attempts to reveal that for us through these stories. It is the "use" of stories that aren't even true. Through the process of descent that we follow the characters on, and the subsequent finding of their identities, we can glean what it is to know ourselves. At that point it's up to us to recognize it - to experience our own recognition. Unfortunately, we often choose to ignore it.

"What a great story," I may say to myself after turning the last page in "The World According to Garp." But if I simply turn that last page and say "it's finished," and move onto the next paperback on the shelf, the story never becomes more than that. It is our ability, as students of literature, to look beyond the story and analyze the characters, the elements of the story and at least speculate what it is these tales are trying to tell us. This is the value in an English degree. Truth, knowledge, individuation, revelation - it's all in there, hiding in the pages of Ala al-Din. We have been given the keys to the truth through the lies of fiction. We don't have to fall victim to an unexamined life. We can, as Frye says, "become aware of our own mythological conditioning" (167). If nothing else, we can sit there and smirk someday while watching a Disney movie with our kids, knowing that a greater story lies beneath the surface, waiting to catch just the right current in the Oceans of Stories so that it can wash up on our shore and reveal itself to us.