Using Epiphany as a Strategy to Read Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations

The reading of a novel imparts many advantages. It can be read for entertainment value, to improve one’s vocabulary, to be inspired and so on. But the primary beneficial value of fiction is that it offers an experience. Everyone has these experiences with sudden flashes of perception and insight. Bernard Richards in his article The English Review calls these sudden flashes as ‘epiphanies’. Epiphany means a ‘manifestation;or ‘showing forth’ and by Christian thinkers it was used to signify a manifestation of God’s presence within the created world. Epiphany is Twelfth Night-6th January-when Christ was visited by the Three Wise Men and his divinity was revealed to the world. It is derived from a Greek word, epiphainien, meaning ‘to manifest’, but currently it has been secularized to refer to other, non-divine forms of revelation.