Let's Go To The Map

('cause you can never know too much)

Peripeteia [per-uh-pi-tahy-uh] (Greek, Περιπέτεια) is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point. The term is primarily used with reference to works of literature. The English form of peripeteia is peripety. Peripety is a sudden reversal dependent on intellect and logic. In modern Greek περιπέτεια means adventure.

Aristotle defines it as "a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity." According to Aristotle, peripeteia, along with discovery, is the most effective when it comes to Drama, particularly in a Tragedy.

There is often no element like Peripetia; it can bring forth or result in terror, mercy, or in comedies it can bring a smile or it can bring forth tears (Rizo). This is the best way to spark and maintain attention throughout the various form and genres of drama.

Peripeteia includes changes of character, but also more external changes. A character who becomes rich and famous from poverty and obscurity has undergone peripeteia, even if his character remains the same.

When a character learns something he had been previously ignorant of, this is normally distinguished from peripeteia as anagnorisis or discovery, a distinction derived from Aristotle's work.
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Because I am exhausted, I can't wrap my brain around writing my own example of this; however, here is an excellent example already written :

The earliest use of peripety in a murder mystery was in "The Three Apples", a medieval Arabian Nights tale. After the murderer reveals himself near the middle of the story, he explains his reasons behind the murder in a flashback, which begins with him going on a journey to find three rare apples for his wife, but after returning finds out she cannot eat them due to her lingering illness. Later at work, he sees a slave passing by with one of those apples claiming that he received it from his girlfriend, a married woman with three such apples her husband gave her. He returns home and demands his wife to show him all three apples, but she only shows him two. This convinces him of her infidelity and he murders her as a result. After he disposes of her body, he returns home where his son confesses that he had stolen one of the apples and that a slave, to whom he had told about his father's journey, had fled with it. The murderer thus realizes his guilt and regrets what he has just done
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I love this example because it is like reading the origin of drama. There are so many stories that follow this outline, in one form or another. My story is a beloved adopted child, and reading the original idea is like meeting one of its birth parents.

I hope you learned something interesting today, I know I did!