Recognition and realization are intimately related, states of changed awareness which suggest heightened states of knowledge. Recognition is an awareness or acknowledgement of something. It occurs in a single and sharp moment. If you recognize something you are merely accepting, or noticing it as a fact without an inner grasp of the matter. Realization, however, is a deep understanding of something that one knows to be true, an understanding that is the result of a process. When you realize something, it is like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle has clicked into place. Essentially, realization is the feeling of everything coming together  in a moment of understanding.

In the Odyssey, when Odysseus finally returns home he is met by the old servant Eurycleia. At first she is unaware of his identity. She has several moments of recognition; she notices his feet, his face and his voice. Finally, when she recognizes the scar that Odysseus sustained from the wild boar, she realizes that the wanderer is in fact her beloved master Odysseus. This realization is the culmination of the sequence of recognitions; all the moments that hint at Odysseus' identity are brought together when Eurycleia notices his scar.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, if considered from the narrator Nick Carraway's point of view, is one long process of realization. Nick begins with the prejudice that Gatsby is perhaps a leading symbol of the shallow culture of 1920s New York City. This changes as Nick witnesses Gatsby's true hopes and fears and his doomed love for Daisy. He comes to perceive Gatsby as perhaps the one genuine man in his social circle, and when Gatsby dies  Nick knows there is nothing left for him in West Egg.

In a story, recognition is a moment that suggests a spring forward in the dramatic action. Realization is an epiphany that suggests change in a character.