We've been assigned to blog about our various epiphanies with literary texts. This, it ought to be said right off the git-go, will not be the final entry on this issue, for which I could post a great many entries. But today I am going to tell about my encounter with a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer called The Slave, one of my very favorite books of all time.

I first read it about three years ago, for Mr. Sexson's Biblical Foundations of Literature class. I picked it up on a Saturday morning, intending to just read a chapter or two at a time. I didn't move until I'd read the whole thing through, and when I looked up it was dark outside. It was a case, as they say, of not being able to put it down. Which doesn't happen to me terribly often, even with books I enjoy. For those who haven't read it, its a very wonderful, potent story of the relationship between Jews and Christians, and wondering of the cruelty of the world with the silence of God. And how, in spite of this, there are epiphanies(possibly even subtle theophonies, if such a thing is possible) to be had. One of the most stunning occurs near the end of part two, where our protagonist, Jacob, is fleeing those who would kill him with his infant child after having lost his Gentile wife in childbirth.

"Jacob remembered the words his namesake had spoken on his deathbed: 'And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was a little way to come to Ephrath; and I buried her there...' His name was Jacob also; he too had lost a beloved wife, the daughter of an idolater, among strangers; Sarah too was buried by the way and had left him a son. Like the Biblical Jacob, he was crossing the river, bearing only a staff, pursued by another Esau. Everything remained the same: the ancient love, the ancient grief. Perhaps four thousand years would again pass; somewhere, at another river, another Jacob would walk mourning another Rachel. Or who knew, perhaps it was always the same Jacob and the same Rachel . Well, but the Redemption has to come. All this can't last forever." pg. 278-279

This may seem obscure to those who are looking at this blog who haven't read the novel. But perhaps not. In a way, this is an epiphany; the understanding of a pattern, of a story, and that you are a part of it.