Epilogue

An Epilogue is a concluding section of a literary work, dramatic performance, or musical composition. It typically provides closure by summarizing the plot's outcome, reflecting on its themes, or offering a glimpse into the characters' future. It often serves to resolve remaining questions, provide moral lessons, or offer a final perspective on the events. The Epilogue can also comment on the work itself, addressing the audience directly or offering insights into the author's intentions. It contrasts with the prologue, which precedes the main body of work.

Epilogue meaning with examples

• The novel's Epilogue fast-forwarded twenty years, showing the protagonist happily married and running a successful business, tying up loose ends and leaving a hopeful feeling after the intense events. This resolution provided a neat and satisfying conclusion, allowing the reader to reflect on their journey with the characters, a common function of epilogues.
• After the climactic battle, the play concluded with an Epilogue where a surviving character delivered a soliloquy, acknowledging the audience's presence, thanking them, and highlighting the play's message about the dangers of unchecked ambition. This dramatic device provides a direct address and reflection on the play’s main themes.
• The movie’s Epilogue, set a decade later, showed the former rivals working together, highlighting their changed relationship and providing a final, heartwarming look at their futures after all their troubles. It offered closure, satisfying the audience's desire to see how the characters’ lives evolved.
• The composer included a brief, reflective Epilogue in the symphony, reprising the main theme in a subdued key and offering a melancholic but beautiful closure to the narrative told by the music. This was a final moment that resonated deeply, allowing emotional reflection of the musical journey.