Flannery O’Connor’s short stories “A good man is hard to find” and “Revelation” share many

While in the waiting room, Mrs. Turpin is attacked by Mary Grace, a young girl with acne and is given a revelation that seems to change Mrs. Turpin’s life. Mrs. Turpin clings to her religion as tightly as she does her bigotry. She is judgmental of African-Americans, poor people, uneducated people, dirty people and even a child. Mrs. Turpin’s major flaw is that she is

Flannery O’Connor shows her readers a realistic look at their own mortality in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The story is about a family of five, a father, mother, grandmother, and two children, starting out on a vacation to Florida from Georgia. The family, on their way to a routine vacation, takes a detour that will change their lives forever. Through the use of literary elements like symbolism and characterization, O’Connor creates a theme of good vs. evil, which can be felt throughout the story by tapping into the audience’s emotions.

Mrs. Turpin in Flannery O’Connor’s short story Revelation, is a prejudice and judgmental woman who spends most of her life prying in the lives of everyone around her. She looks at people not for who they are, but for their race or social standing. In fact, Mrs. Turpin is concerned with race and status so much that it seems to take over her life. Although she seems to disapprove of people of different race or social class, Mrs. Turpin seems to be content and appreciative with her own life. It is not until Mrs. Turpin’s Revelation that she discovers that her ways of life are no better then those she looks down upon and they will not assure her a place in Heaven.

In his article “Latin Names and Images of Ugliness in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Revelation’,” literary scholar Ronald E. Pepin writes about the prevalence of ugliness in this addition to O’Connor’s continuum. He begins his analysis with the main character and protagonist; Ruby Turpin. Ruby is portrayed as self-righteous and blind to her own flaws. Her judgmental nature and entitled attitude lead to conflict with other characters; most notably antagonist Mary Grace, who quickly sees the “ugliness” within Ruby Turpin. In the short story, Mary Grace quietly sits across the doctor’s office from Mrs. Turpin trying to distract herself from Ruby’s racist and condescending comments; but fails to withhold her anger and lashes out verbally and physically. According to the article, Ruby is the only character who’s

In Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation” Mrs. Turpin, is portrayed as a judgmental person who is racist and highly opinionated. She considers herself a moral, respectable Christian. She feels far superior to those that she is confined in a doctor’s waiting room with during the majority of the story. Turpin’s antics force the reader to perceive her as a character with a warped sense of others. The only person she relates to is a “well dressed, pleasant lady” with a daughter that she thinks is ugly. O’Connor uses irony through a series of events that cause Mrs. Turpin to experience a “revelation” that may convince her to change her racist and judgmental ways.

Turpin’s reveries underscore a struggle that she has with her identity; her need to place herself and others into categories gives her life meaning and balance. Moreover, Mrs. Turpin has placed God into a position of subservience that allows her to have a choice of race and socioeconomic position. The repeat references to God and Jesus strongly suggests that Mrs. Turpin ascribes to a hierarchical-type religion, God values people who work and have obtained things more than people who have very little. Having meager means is indicative of laziness. Within the context of the story and by Mrs. Turpin’s theology, religion would only work for white people. Black people could not make it into heaven in a system set up for them to fail. To that end, Mrs. Turpin places a high value on how people look. Notwithstanding her own physical challenge of being overweight, Mrs. Turpin’s actions imply that having acne, a runny nose, inappropriate shoes, or being dirty somehow makes one unworthy of common courtesy. Therefore, when Mary Grace mentioned hell and called her a wart hog, Mrs. Turpin becomes shaken. Her identity has been

Mary Grace utters these words to Mrs. Turpin and they do strike her in a very deep way. She cannot get past those words and begins to obsess over them. She gets angry and says “How am I a hog” “Exactly how and I like them” (330). “A final surge of fury shook her and she roared “Who do you think you are?”

The main character Mrs. Turpin is waiting in a doctors office and immediately names the people surrounding her. At the beginning of the story she picks out “a fat girl of eighteen or nineteen” and described her as a “poor girl face blue with acne.” (O’Connor 4) Mrs. Turpin decides to give her the name of “the ugly girl.”Right away she picks out characteristics of the girl and labels her, but she has never met her. By Mrs. Turpin singling out the girl Flannery O’Connor wants the reader to see the human flaw of judgement. Another place that judgment is shown in the story is when Mrs. Turpin matches shoes with a person's label.

Turpin is externally a devout Christian woman, she is indeed a warthog at heart. As Mrs. Turpin talks to other patients in the waiting room, she proudly discusses her farm. When speaking on her hogs at her own farm, she states” Our hogs are not dirty and they don’t stink… their feet never touch the ground!” I believe these comment about the hogs mirrors Mrs. Turpins’ ideals about herself.

As soon as the story begins, O’Connor introduces readers to the main character, Mrs. Ruby Turpin. She presents Mrs. Turpin’s racist and classist beliefs with no censor. Mrs. Turpin visiting the doctor with her husband because he has an ulcer on his leg. She entered the doctor’s office and immediately began mentally separating the patients in a classist manner. There was one lady at the doctor who Mrs. Turpin described as pleasant because she was well-dressed. The pleasant lady had a college-aged daughter with her who readers later discover is named Mary Grace. Mrs. Turpin described Mary Grace as fat and ugly. There was also a family that consisted of a mother, a grandmother, and a little boy. Mrs. Turpin described the family as white-trash.

Turpin. The grandmother demonstrates a “superior moral attitude” when she communicates with The Misfit, telling him to “pray, pray” (O’Connor “Good Man” 365), and saying that “Jesus would help [him]” (O’Connor “Good Man” 365), even though he does not want to change. Mrs. Turpin’s beliefs are similar. She is constantly expressing gratitude toward Jesus that she was not born black or “white trash” or ugly (O’Connor “Revelation” 384). In another’s eyes, Mrs. Turpin might as well be ugly, or white trash.

Flannery O’Connor was a devout catholic whose writing was a reflection of the violence in the temporal world. O’Connor suffered with lupus which had a grave impact on her life, but that didn’t stop her from publishing many stories that achieved awards. O’Connor’s stories, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People” are two examples of the talented woman’s works that gained popularity over the years. Through analyzing these short stories, one could insinuate that there are many commonalities between the setting, characters, and themes of these stories.

Turpin as if she had some very special reason for disliking her.” However, because of the point of view, the reader does not know what that reason is, or what Mary Grace is

Ruby Turpin in her story “Revelation” and the grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” have much in common. The grandmother incessantly, oblivious to the displeasure she is preoccupied and causing others with what she wants to the exclusion of anyone else’s needs and feelings. In the stories the main character is a women who is self-satisfied in her conviction of superior importance. Both women are Christian and suffer violence of

The narrator of “Revelation” does not make an explicit judgment on Mrs. Turpin’s character; the reader is left to fill in the gaps in the text. Mrs. Turpin initially reminded me of a woman I know and do not enjoy named Verona. Like Mrs. Turpin, Verona is a Southern lady whose large presence dominates any space she