Anagnorisis  

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twist ending

Anagnorisis, or discovery, is the protagonist's sudden recognition of their own or another character's true identity or nature. Through this technique, previously unforeseen character information is revealed. A notable example of anagnorisis occurs in Oedipus Rex: Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother in ignorance, learning the truth only toward the climax of the play. This technique is used on multiple occasions in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, with an antagonist disguised as an ally to the protagonists until the very end (or vice-versa). The earliest use of this device as a twist ending in a murder mystery was in "The Three Apples", a medieval Arabian Nights tale, where the protagonist Ja'far ibn Yahya by chance discovers a key item towards the end of the story that reveals the culprit behind the murder to be his own slave all along.

Mystery

The earliest use of anagnorisis in a murder mystery was in "The Three Apples", a classical Arabian Nights tale, where the device is employed to great effect in its twist ending. The protagonist of the story, Ja'far ibn Yahya, is ordered by Harun al-Rashid to find the culprit behind a murder mystery within three days or else be executed. It is only after the deadline has past, and as he prepares to be executed, that he discovers that the culprit was his own slave all along.

Anagnorisis, however, is not limited to classical or Elizabethan sources. Author and lecturer Ivan Pintor Iranzo points out that contemporary auteur M. Night Shyamalan uses similar revelations in The Sixth Sense, in which child psychologist Malcolm Crowe successfully treats a child who is having visions of dead people, only to realize at the close of the film that Crowe himself is dead, and in Unbreakable, the character of David conversely realizes that he has survived a train crash that killed the other passengers, due to a supernatural power.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Anagnorisis" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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