Flannery O'Connor Post #2

                 “Revelation”

I understand Sam Hamill much better now. If you don’t focus on the details of theses stories, you begin to feel like you are reading the same story repeatedly. I chose to respond to “Revelation” because it is one of the only stories without a pathetic male main character.

The story opens with Mrs. Turpin taking her husband to the doctor. The waiting room is very small and has limited seating. Mrs. Turpin appraises the people in the room and determines that there are three that are white trash, one old man, a pleasant looking woman, a fat and ugly college-age girl, and themselves. As soon as she sits down, she begins a conversation with the pleasant looking woman since she is the only one worthy of her conversation.

Throughout the time spent in the waiting room, we learn that Mrs. Turpin feels very blessed that she is who she is in spite of her very clear prejudices against so many people. Everybody in the waiting room seems to be looking down their noses at everyone else. Even the clearly poor people Mrs. Turpin labeled as white trash, are racist. With all that hatred in one little room, it is no surprise that there was an incident. Of course, the incident did come from an unlikely source. The college girl, who perhaps was the only decent person in the room, threw her book at Mrs. Turpin and struck her in the face. She then commenced to leap at her and try to choke her. Once she was subdued, she called Mrs. Turpin some unpleasant things that caused Mrs. Turpin some distress.

At the end of the story, Mrs. Turpin has a vision of a bridge leading to heaven. On the bridge, she sees all the people she looks down on celebrating as they went. Behind all those people, she saw the people more like herself, who were crossing in a more dignified and solemn manner. When she looked closer she noticed the alarm on their faces as what they considered their virtues were torn away. In the end, they were no better than the people who had preceded them. Their solemn ascent was due to the fact that they had no cause for celebration. In the end, it was those who they had trampled under their feet that had cause to celebrate.