Ignored Epiphany / Literature

Ignored Epiphany in Literature.

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• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "Alice often gave herself very good advice, but she very seldom followed it."
• In The Case of Sergeant Grisha, Major General Schieffenzahn is briefly convinced to rescind the order for Grisha's execution (and has a What Have I Become? moment too); but a snowstorm prevents him making a phone call, and by the time communication is restored, he's abandoned his forgiving whim.
• In The Cask of Amontillado, Montresor feels sick at heart after hearing Fortunato's bells jingle for the last time when walling him up alive, but dismisses it as being caused by the dampness of the catacombs.
• In the backstory of The Daily Task of Preventing My Disciple From Turning to the Dark Side, Mu Chen realizes that he was a bad mentor to his disciple, which probably contributed to said disciple's Face–Heel Turn. However, he thinks that this realization in itself means he now knows everything necessary to be a good mentor. He happily trots off to redeem his past failures by finding his disciple's reincarnation, and teaching him badly again, only in a completely different way this time. Although Mu Chen has technically learned something, he is still as ignorant as he was in the past, and ignorant of that fact. This pattern of behaviour continues throughout the series, with Mu Chen feeling entitled to a place in his disciple's life, and assuming that Gu Yunjue has no agency in the increasingly horrific actions he does. And of course, his disciple's evil couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Mu Chen is spoiling him rotten...
• Darth Bane has one when he realizes that he inadvertently killed his own father by unknowingly tapping into the Dark Side of the Force. His shock and guilt are strong enough to sever his connection to the Force, and he realizes that the Dark Side will ultimately destroy him. Unfortunately for everyone in the galaxy (especially himself), his desire for power overcomes this brief moment of remorse.
• According to Candayce this happens every time she or the other Wetherford bullies met Janine's eye and "soul-piercing gaze" in Dinoverse. They became aware of how petty and treacherous they were, how little integrity they had, but while this would distract them from what they were doing and keep them from doing anything to her, they never changed their behavior.
• Discworld:
  • In Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters, Granny Weatherwax uses headology on Lady Felmet to show her all the evil she's committed. There's a moment when Felmet acts like she's about to pull a Heel–Face Turn, or at least a Villainous Breakdown, but she shakes it off and then says she knows exactly what she's done, and she likes it.
  • The faculty members at Unseen University tend to dump unwanted tasks on younger wizard Ponder Stibbons, but they don't realize the extent of this behavior until Unseen Academicals, when he pulls off a one-man majority vote using his accumulated positions. At this point they finally realize what a burden they've placed on him and decide that someone has to do something about it. Three guesses as to who gets that job...
  • In The Truth, Mr. Pin has been flashed with Otto Chriek's Dark Light Camera and experiences a supernatural form of guilt and paranoia. But he snaps out of it once he finds himself in a near-death situation, and kills his business partner Mr. Tulip in order to survive. By the time he does die, and Death comes for him, he's clearly learnt nothing, instead trying to use Exact Words and a Potato to get out of being punished.
• In the Disney Fairies series, Vidia is infamous for plucking feathers from Mother Dove, whose molted feathers are used to make fairy dust. The first book, Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, reveals that Vidia didn't enjoy plucking the feathers, but convinced herself that Mother Dove was making the pain seem worse than it really was. Later in the story, she has to pluck a feather from a golden hawk, who has the power to telepathically share its pain, and thus she feels what plucking feels like for herself. The narration points out that Vidia could have acknowledged that what she'd done was cruel, but instead she decided to believe the hawk had made the pain feel more powerful than it was to spite her. This is averted in the movie continuity though. More specifically, in Great Fairy Rescue Vidia slams a door of a makeshift house trapping Tinker Bell inside. She has a My God, What Have I Done? moment, goes back for help and even admits her mistake. Since then, she had always been supporting Tink and the gang, if still a bit snarky and sassy.
• Divine Misfortune: While Syph manages to make a stable life for herself with a mix of Gorgoz's incarceration and accumulating willing followers, Syph is still obsessed with Lucky and will continue to stalk him for the foreseeable future.
• Dragonlance:
  • Lord Soth has at least several of these during the Ravenloft novel Knight of the Black Rose.
    • The first, in his backstory, begins with Soth having just been found guilty at his trial. As he is carted through the city of Palanthas in disgrace, a mob angrily taunts him and throws fruit and rocks at the once heroic knight. One of them shouts "The Kingpriest is right! Evil exists even within the Knights!" This gives Soth a moment of remorse and reflection that he has provided just that proof for the fanatical Kingpriest, and about how this will allow the Kingpriest's Corrupt Church to strengthen its grip on the world... but then a rock hits him and he forgets all about that and goes back to angrily cursing the crowd.
    • After his escape from prison, Soth returns to his Tower, where the rest of the Knights besiege him. As this drags on longer, Soth becomes more corrupt and starts falling further and further from the hero he used to be. At one point, after an argument with his wife, he hits her. Looking at himself in the mirror afterwards, Soth realizes just how far he's fallen, goes back, begs forgiveness of his wife and the gods, and gets a divine vision of a Redemption Quest: to stop the Kingpriest from inadvertently causing the Cataclysm. Soth charges off on his quest... until he runs into a group that accuse his wife of being unfaithful, and Soth promptly charges right back, allowing The End of the World as We Know It so he can confront her about this.
    • After wandering into the magic border of Ravenloft, the Demiplane of Dread, Soth is presented with a vision of himself and what might have been if he had fulfilled The Quest above: himself with his honor restored, his dead wife by his side, and the son she was pregnant with there with him. Soth is told that if he merely repents and asks forgiveness from the good gods this might come true. Soth hesitates for a time, but his pride prevents him from doing so, and he instead fights the other version of himself, and kills his son when the son tries to interfere. An arguable case because we don't know what Soth was thinking while he hesitated (the chapter is told through the point of view of another character), and there's a good chance it was a cruel joke on the part of the dark forces that control the demiplane. Though it is Canon Discontinuity, he nevertheless later subverts it later, and was allowed to return to Krynn, where he had a Death Equals Redemption.
  • The character Raistlin does this in the alternate future where he becomes a god. When Raistlin has destroyed all the gods except Paladine (the chief god of good), he speaks with the immortal chronicler Astinus. Astinus tells Raistlin what will become of him after Paladine's death: an eternity of helpless, angry loneliness. Raistlin hesitates... then laughs bitterly and kills Paladine anyway. It's worth noting that this version of Raistlin was almost totally insane prior to this conversation, and seems to have snapped for good after learning of his fate. The main-timeline Raistlin, thankfully, subverts this trope.
• In the Frog and Toad story "Cookies", Frog and Toad try to stop themselves from eating too many cookies by putting them in a box, but they keep opening up the box and eating cookies anyway. After some failed attempts at making the box increasingly inaccessible (tying the box up with string, putting the tied-up box on a high shelf, and so on), Frog throws the cookies to the birds to teach Toad about the importance of willpower. After this happens, Toad walks off and openly announces he's now going to bake a cake.
• In the The Godfather, Michael realizes during his time in exile that the Mafia had been the ruin of Sicily, and further realizes that it will be the ruin of America too if it, and specifically "his father's empire", is allowed to continue to grow. Needless to say, this does not stop him from taking over his father's empire and doing his best to make it grow.
• Harry Potter:
  • During a Pensieve Flashback in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Hepzibah Smith notices briefly that Tom Riddle, Jr.'s eyes seem to have turned red, but she dismisses it as a trick of the light. According to Dumbledore, she died two days later.
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when Harry and the Dursleys are parting ways, seemingly forever, Petunia looks as if she's about to say something to Harry, then she simply... doesn't. A deleted scene from the movie suggests what she might have been about to say:
    Petunia: You didn't just lose a mother that night in Godric's Hollow. I lost a sister.
• Happens to many of the characters in The Last Resort by Jan Carson, since an inability to move on is a major theme, but the best example is probably Richard. Richard works to help homeless people, but at home pretends he has the sort of job his father would approve of; one where he's climbing a corporate ladder with a suit and a briefcase. When the Impossible Thief takes his briefcase, he realises that if he goes home without it, his dad will ask where it is, and thinks that maybe this is his chance to make a clean breast of things and explain the whole situation. Or he could just say he left it at the office.
• Moby-Dick: In Chapter 132, Ahab considers cutting his losses, abandoning the chase for Moby Dick and returning home to his family. He doesn't go through with it.
• New Jedi Order: During the attack on Ithor, Shedao Shai has a moment of hesitation where he (a Yuuzhan Vong who's considered a bit of an extreme nut by other Vong) starts to wonder if maybe the priests have it all wrong, and that the way they've been doing things isn't the only way to go about doing things. Then he ignores it and gets right back to work.
• Paradise Lost:
  • When Satan sees the beauty of Earth for the first time, he is deeply saddened and laments on how he used to be part of the beauty created by God, and that if he had been a lower angel, he would have been perfectly happy continuing to serve Him. Then he rejects the idea of repentance by concluding that any apology he gave would be insincere because he's gone too far into making evil his good, so he can't turn back.
  • When Belial suggests that if all the fallen angels just say they're sorry, God may let them back in. Mammon shoots down the idea outright, but suggests that they could at least try to make Hell into a nice place and live basically at peace with God. It's Beelzebub (on Satan's earlier advice) who convinces everyone to just go with evil and try to corrupt humanity.

• The scientist Chatton in Project Tau. Even after hearing Kata's story, his fury and guilt is centered around the fact that he's been involved in the torture of a legal human, as opposed to just another clone like Tau, and not the act of torture itself.
• In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Regained, Eramus has repeated moments of this after some revelations. He gets called on it, frequently.
• In Jules Verne's Robur the Conqueror, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans spend most of the book getting a Fantastic Aesop about flying machines proven to them in every possible way…but, as the narration points out near the end, both of them are just too stubborn and narrow-minded to let it alter their actions much.
• In Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles the hero, Uhtred, spends the first couple of books as a violent, arrogant, murderous thug whose only real virtues are loyalty to his oaths and being one of the best fighters around. Half-way through the second book a prostitute tells him exactly what she thinks of him, and he's forced into something of a personal re-evaluation after which... he doesn't stop being arrogant, murderous and unfaithful to his wife. But he does start to feel a little guilty about it.
• The Scarlet Letter: In the middle, Roger Chillingworth realizes that his desire for revenge against Rev. Dimmesdale for cuckolding him has turned him into "A fiend!" Hawthorne's narration says that this sort of moral clarity sometimes only occurs to people once in many years. However, Chillingworth's long since lost any purpose in life other than revenge, and so continues down the path.
• The Screwtape Letters offers some insight into the psychology that causes this in Real Life, with a dose of diabolical interference.
  I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defense by argument, I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control, and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the countersuggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line, for when I said, "Quite. In fact much TOO important to tackle at the end of a morning," the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added, "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind," he was already halfway to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that sort of thing" just couldn't be true. He knew he'd had a narrow escape, and in later years was fond of talking about "that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic." He is now safe in Our Father's house.
• Jack Torrance has one of these in Stephen King's The Shining. In the chapter "The Snowmobile," Jack experiences a moment of clarity in which he becomes aware of exactly how the hotel has been manipulating him and turning him against his family. However, he keeps on thinking about the issue so intensely that he changes his own mind, concludes that everything is his five-year-old son's fault and that Jack himself is doomed whatever he does, and destroys the snowmobile, the family's one real chance to escape. It's worth pointing out that it's not just a case of him changing his own mind; as a result of its (very tangible, very unpleasant) influence, his thoughts take a different direction as long as he's not actually inside any of the buildings that make up the hotel.
• Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Roland Sullivan from Lethal Justice is the personification of this trope! He started out as a relatively decent guy and family man. Then Arden Gillespie entered into the picture. He became addicted to her, and engaged in adultery. He helped Arden suck up all the money belonging to an elderly couple, causing this couple to be Driven to Suicide. Then, to cover up their crime, they frame Sara Whittier (AKA Alexis Thorne), their own employee for it! Sara is found guilty and imprisoned for a year. It is only when they framed Sara that Roland had a Heel Realization. He made no attempt to make it right. He lost sleep over it, forced Arden to set up some pictures of Sara in their offices (as a reminder of how low they sunk), and tried to spend more time with his family. He and Arden practically blackmail each other. He actually wants to find Sara to apologize to her... and use Buy Them Off on her. He still uses his ill-gotten gain to live the high life. He still cheats on his wife with Arden. Sure, his internal monologues claim that he has no willpower, but it seems that he just uses that to excuse his behaviour. His wife finds out that he cheated on her, throws him out and makes moves to divorce him. He actually tried to claim that he did all this for his wife and brags that he'll bring in lots of money and they'll all live the high life, but she rejects this, and points out that she never wanted to live any high life. She makes it clear that she knows that he and Arden framed Sara and urges him to do the right thing. He just blows that off. Later, he says to Arden, "I just realized something. You don't have a conscience, do you?" Arden simply retorts that it is too late to worry about something like a conscience. Roland is clearly a Horrible Judge of Character if he only made this realization at this late date. He makes no attempt to do the right thing or break away from her. He gets involved in another money-stealing scheme with Arden. Sure, he tried to refuse, but he still went and got involved. By the end, he gives off the attitude of a man who wants to get caught and punished. The fact that he has multiple instances just makes him very unsympathetic.
• In the Spaceforce (2012) books, Jay is forcibly brought to the realisation more than once that his compulsive womanising may destroy his life, particularly as such behaviour is actually a criminal offence in the Taysan Empire. He does recognise this and vows to reform at the end of the first book — the very first scene of the next book finds him in a tavern, attempting to pursue a liaison with the serving wench.
• In the Spellsinger novel "Path of the Perumbulator" a Wolverine Wizard was driven insane because he was a coward, which is something against their natures. In his insanity he captured a Reality-Warping force to drive the rest of the world insane. In the end, the heroes free the force as well as cure his insanity through magic. He thanks them and realizes what he did was foolish, but then realizes that despite being insane and a coward, he had massive power over the world (Power is something all Wolverines pride above all else) which is now gone. So he decides to kill the heroes anyway.
• Harold Lauder, a highly intelligent but deeply disturbed teenager, has one in Stephen King's The Stand. Prior to the plague outbreak, he was a fat pimply high school outcast that embodied Wangst. After spending weeks living in Boulder, he manages to make a place for himself in the community. His work helping to bury bodies causes him to feel a sense of camaraderie with his fellow workers. At one point, one of the workers calls him "Hawk". Harold thinks the guy is making fun of him- calling fat, pimply Harold Lauder "Hawk"- only to realize that he isn't fat or pimply anymore, the people around him don't know that he was a loser in high school, and even if they knew, they wouldn't care. For a brief moment, Harold can see that all of that petty high school bullshit that he was carrying around was just that: bullshit. He goes home that day resolving to abandon his plans to betray the Free Zone and become an honest and upstanding citizen. Too bad the Big Bad sent Nadine Cross to seduce him back to the Dark Side.
• The Sword of Saint Ferdinand: Pero Miguel freaks out and considers to leave the Brothers Vargas alone after Fortún Paja threatens to kill him if he attempts to murder them again. However, his "ally" Pedro de Guzmán, who also hates the Vargas and is manipulating Pero into doing his dirty work, asks him if he is so coward as to be afraid of an old crossbowman. Angry and emboldened, Pero attempts to kill García Vargas again, and gets immediately killed by said old crossbowman.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • The Lord of the Rings:
    • When Gandalf offers Saruman a Last-Second Chance, he genuinely struggles and seems perhaps on the edge of accepting before his Pride and jealousy of Gandalf cause him to refuse.
      A shadow passed over Saruman's face; then it went deathly white. Before he could conceal it, they saw through the mask the anguish of a mind in doubt, loathing to stay and dreading to leave its refuge. For a second he hesitated, and no one breathed. Then he spoke, and his voice was shrill and cold. Pride and hate were conquering him.
    • Played with in Gollum's case. Seeing Frodo asleep at the top of Cirith Ungol, he teeters extremely close to a Heel–Face Turn, but goes right back to being The Starscream a few minutes later, but only because Sam wakes up and, in his confusion, abuses him as he always does. Gollum didn't take it well at all.
  • In The Silmarillion we have Sauron's repentance before Eönwë at the end of the War of Wrath, which he then takes back when Eönwë asks him to return to Valinor to be judged.
  • The Fall of Númenor: The last king of Númenor Ar-Pharazôn also has one when he catches sight of the Undying Lands, and momentarily hesitates before invading them...which lead to himself and his army being destroyed.
• Johnny in The Truth of Rock And Roll becomes the Gray Man because he forgets Jenny's lessons.
• The Twilight Saga:
  • Edward knows that stalking Bella in Midnight Sun (2020) is wrong and he even points it out to himself; he just doesn't care. For that matter, Bella tells herself dozens of times throughout all of the books that Edward is dangerous, Jacob is dangerous, she's in danger, she shouldn't be with Edward, etc. She never pays these revelations much mind, and goes right back to ogling Edward right after.
  • In Breaking Dawn, Leah calls Bella out on her selfishness. While everyone else jumps down Leah's throat for upsetting her, Bella admits that Leah is right. This realization is ignored by everyone, including Bella herself, who proceeds to continue being selfish anyway.
• In the Warhammer novel Caledor, as the Phoenix Guard smack Malekith around with halberds glimmering with the flame of Asuryan, he realises that the gods found him unworthy to be Phoenix King. All this does in the long term is move him from "I am the rightful King and all the elves who oppose me are wrong" to "I am the rightful King and the gods are wrong".
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • In Graham McNeill's Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, Fulgrim realizes he is committing a horrible crime when he fights his brother Ferrus Manus, but his sword convinces him to kill him. (Then it lets him realize it, so it can destroy him.)
  • Another novel reveals that Kharn the Betrayer went through this when a Loyalist tried to redeem him. The true reason he is so Ax-Crazy is that, deep down, he knows he's on the wrong side.
• Years before becoming the biggest Knight Templar out of many in The Warlord Chronicles, Nimue was just a druid's apprentice who, for a single day, considered throwing magic and the gods aside, marrying the main character (who had been in love with her since they were just kids) raising a family and owning a farm. Considering that many years later Nimue's actions resulted in the death of Merlin, the betrayal of Arthur, the maiming of main character Derfel, the deaths of many of Arthur's most loyal warriors and thus, indirectly, Arthur's death at the hands of Mordred and the weakening of Britain's ability to resist the Saxons not to mention the misery these actions caused her, it might have been better if she'd done just that.
• Mark Twain's "The War Prayer" describes the US as being in the grips of Patriotic Fervor (inspired by the Philippine-American War), set against the backdrop of a pastor preaching the justness of war and for victory for their soldiers. Then comes a stranger, pronouncing himself a Messenger from God, to intone the unspoken part of their prayer — that the enemy their sons face are torn to shreds, and every possible consequence stemming from such a large-scale loss of life. Notably, Twain deliberately published this posthumously, for fear of public backlash.
  (After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits." It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
• In Richard Adams' Watership Down, General Woundwort is offered an alternative to bloodshed by Hazel, and a chance to prove himself a "visionary" leader. He considers it for a moment, but then rejects it offhand in favour of his carefully planned destruction of the enemy warren.
• In the last book of The Wheel of Time, Demandred, the commanding general of the Shadow's forces, comes to the realization mid battle that he finally has everything he'd ever wanted- the love of a beautiful woman, an entire nation who revere him as a conquering hero, and the chance to (by switching sides mid-battle along with his followers) defeat the Shadow himself and become the world's savior. Unfortunately, he then decides that even if he did that, he'd never be happy until he killed Rand, the reincarnation of his hated rival. Needless to say, Demandred did not turn on the rest of the Shadow's forces that day, and remained a villain to his death.

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