If eyes are the windows to the soul, then shoes must be the windows to one’s class. According to Mrs. Ruby Turpin, the main character in a short story by Flannery O’ Connor called “Revelation,” she can pretty much sums up a person’s worth by looking at their shoes. Mrs. Turpin thinks her class is higher than most because she is white and she owns a home and land. The evidence begins when she and her husband Claud enter a crowded waiting room at a local doctor’s office. She immediately begins to size up the occupants. She orders her husband to sit in the only empty chair because his leg needs care. She comes across as having a very dominating personality. She turns her focus on a dirty child, whom she refers to as “white trash,” occupying a chair that should clearly be given up to her as an elder. She thinks a child with better upbringing would know to give up his seat. She then pairs the boy with two dirty women who turn out to be his mother and grandmother. Mrs. Turpin continuously labels them “white trash” while she ponders the class of each person around her. When she starts a mindless conversation with the only person she thinks worthy in the room, you can’t help but realize her bigotry as the conversation progresses and her thoughts are further revealed.
Ironically, the person she strikes up the conversation with is the mother of Mary Grace who later attacks Mrs. Turpin as the story unfolds. Mary Grace is described as a “fat girl of eighteen or nineteen, scowling into a thick blue book which Mrs. Turpin saw was entitled Human Development” (393). Mrs. Turpin feels sorry for her because her face is “blue” with acne and she thinks her to be ugly. Mary Grace takes an immediate dislike to Mrs. Turpin and can’t imagine anyone t...
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...s not angry with Mary Grace but rather God himself. Later, she questions her epiphany. God quickly shows her the procession of those entering Heaven. Her lifelong misconceptions were revealed as she saw various races and classes of people marching with great dignity. Her revelation was revealed. Grace is the way to Heaven. Class and race have nothing to do with the journey.
Works Cited
Levine, Amy-Jill. Feminist Companion to the New Testament. London: TT & Clark. 2009. Electronic Edition.
Myer, Michael. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature 9th ed. Boston/St. Martin. 2012 Print.
Meyer, Michael. “Perspective.” Meyer 407.
O’Connor, Flannery. “Revelation.” Meyer 393.
O’Connor, Flannery. “Revelation.” Meyer 400.
Sykes, John. Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of Revelation. Columbia: University of Missouri. Press. 2007. Electronic edition.
The Bible: The Old Testament. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Sarah Lawall et al. Vol 1. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 1999. 47-97.
Dumas, Jacky, and Jessica Hooten Wilson. "The Unrevealed In Flannery O'connor's 'Revelation'.(Critical Essay)." The Southern Literary Journal 2 (2013): 72. Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
In the short story “Revelation”, Flannery O’Connor shows that self-discovery can be a painful but ultimately rewarding process to go through. The story is written in third-person and feels like it has no rising action and then out of the blue a climax comes. The characters in this story are not very likable, especially the protagonist Mrs. Turpin. She is an egotistical, self-praising woman whom O’Connor describes as a big. Her image of herself is of a person who is blessed by God above all others. She uses the pastime of “naming classes” to reassure herself of her place in the world and that none is above her in God’s eyes.
Throughout all of Flannery O’Connor’s work, there are three dominant themes that show themselves: Christianity, irony, and grotesqueness. In nearly every story of hers, O’Connor is able to make a tragic story very grotesque in the way that she describes the events and characters of her story. [add more to introduction]
Janie’s first discovery about herself comes when she is a child. She is around the age of six when she realizes that she is colored. Janie’s confusion about her race is based on the reasoning that all her peers and the kids she grows up with are white. Janie and her Nanny live in the backyard of the white people that her Nanny works for. When Janie does not recognize herself on the picture that is taken by a photographer, the others find it funny and laughs, leaving Janie feeling humiliated. This racial discovery is not “social prejudice or personal meanness but affection” (Cooke 140). Janie is often teased at school because she lives with the white people and dresses better than the other colored kids. Even though the kids that tease her were all colored, this begins Janie’s experience to racial discrimination.
...yne A. The HarperCollins Study Bible New Revised Standard Edition . New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. 1645-1722. Print.
She has a very strong belief this and Thanks God that he didn’t make her like any of those people below her. Even goes as far as debating lives if God would have a given her a choice between any of the people she thinks she is better than. A trip to the doctor’s office for her husband’s ulcer brings a new “revelation” for Mrs. Turpin. While observing the people in the waiting room, she analyzes them and gives them titles in the groups below her. White- trash, ugly and so on. There is one girl in the room though who seems to really have something against Mrs. Turpin. Every comment she makes seems to upset the young girl and make her agitation to rise. It disturbs and also confuses her because she can’t understand why the girl who doesn’t even know her would want to ac so rudely towards such a kind a giving woman such as her. “All at once the ugly girl turned her lips inside out again. Her eyes fixed like two drills on Mrs. Turpin. This time there was no mistaking that there was something urgent behind them.” Continuing on in conversation with the white- trash an outburst of thanking the lord aloud causes the young lady to suddenly hurl the book she was reading at Mrs. Turpin and jumping across the table and attempting to choke her. The nurse and doctor try to contain the young girl while slowly giving her a shot in the arm to calm her insanity down.
While the main character Mrs.Turpin is sitting in the waiting room she begins to judge the all the strangers on how “they sat kind of vacant and white trashy”(4). Even though Mrs. Turpin does not know the people in the waiting it does not stop her from making assumptions about their class. O’Connor’s pejorative styles reveals Mrs. Turpin's judgmental character . Another display of O'Connor's style is through the dialogue of another girl in the waiting room. After listening to Mrs. Turpin speak in the waiting room the girl sees Mrs.Turpin's true identity and tells her to “Go back to hell where [she] came from”(21). Her pejorative language reveals the way others see Mrs. Turpin and presents her judgemental character once again. As expressed, Flannery O'Connor's pejorative style reveals the way Mrs. Turpin views others and how others view
The bible has been the center of many debates and has been used correctly and incorrectly. My objective in this paper is to illuminate the many flaws in the century-old yet ever present interpretation of the bible that suggests women are lesser than men. I will also commend and explain the use of the bible during the civil rights movement.
she was pretty and that was everything” (225). This captivation with herself along with the constant looking in the mirrors and thinking her mother was only pestering her all the time because her mother’s own good looks were long gone by now (225) shows a sign of immaturity because she believes everything revolves around whether or not someo...
In reality, her writing is filled with meaning and symbolism, hidden in plain sight beneath a seamless narrative style that breathes not a word of agenda, of dogma, or of personal belief. In this way, her writing is intrinsically esoteric, in that it contains knowledge that is hidden to all but those who have been instructed as to how and where to look for it, i.e. the initiated. Flannery O'Connor is a Christian writer, and her work is message-oriented, yet she is far too brilliant a stylist to tip her hand; like all good writers, crass didacticism is abhorrent to her. Nevertheless, she achieves what no Christian writer has ever achieved: a type of writing that stands up on both literary and the religious grounds, and succeeds in doing justice to both.
Carson, D, & Moo, D. (2005) An introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Women in the biblical bible represent a transitioning and evolutionary turn for women in the future. Biblical women have open doors of opportunities that allow women to become more independent, confidents and sophisticated. History has shown how women first were seen as a typical care taker or protector compared to a “provider,” which was more associated with men. However, over the century, there has been a chain broken and opportunities released that allowed women to become more like men to a certain degree. There has been a change in status, roles, and education. Biblical women have allowed women in the twenty-first century the chance to obtain a higher status role such as, a provider for their family. Therefore, allowing women to stand up for their rights and what they believe in using sexual techniques. Such as, manipulating men, using their body as a weapon and the power of “sisterhood” to get what they want.
Whitt, Margaret. Understanding Flannery O’Connor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 47-48, 78. Print.
Newsom, Carol A., and Sharon H. Ringe. Women's Bible Commentary. expanded ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.