Imagery In Flannery O Connor's Revelation

When an author writes a story, he or she will generally use different writing techniques to create the piece. These techniques have the ability to turn a story into something truly unique, as they allow the story to unfold in it’s own way. In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, author Flannery O’Connor used the techniques of symbolism and foreshadowing throughout the entire piece to create a deeply captivating story, as so many of the details mentioned in the beginning of the story are glimpses of the end.

Mrs. Turpin in the story Revelation by Flannery O’Connor is a very interesting character. Mrs. Turpin thinks of herself as a righteous Christian. She depicts herself as a respectable and very charitable person. She views herself as a morally superior person that is going to save come judgement day. Mrs. Turpin in reality has not one of these qualities, although she promotes herself as women, that is saved and going to receive an eternal bliss. Instead of having true Christian qualities she is judgmental and a racist. One is able to view the way Mrs. Turpin racism by looking at the way she judges people on her ranking system. At the bottom of her ranking system is Blacks and White Trash and above that are people that are homeowners. Above the homeowners are the people with homes and own land which was her class and the last rank was peopled with home, land and are rich. Given this example, this illustrates the

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 class, we have read a couple of Flannery O’ Connor’s short stories which include A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, and Revelations. After reading these stories, I noticed that Flannery O’ Connor changes the story but in a sense keeps the same main characters in every story. The main things that change between these characters are how they decide to handle a situation and their names; the things that do not change are often the outlook that they have on the world. I noticed the grandma from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Ruby Turpin from Revelations follow the criteria that I listed above. Throughout this paper, I am going to discuss the similarities and differences between the grandma and Ruby Turpin.

“Revelation”, a short story written by Flannery O’Connor focuses on themes of racism, religion, and judgment brought to a waiting room of a doctor’s office. Ruby Turpin, who takes the role of the protagonist, is an insecure Christian with prejudice views on society. Mrs. Turpin has an unhealthy habit of placing people in their “proper categories”. The waiting room was filled with people from several of these categories, which Mrs. Turpin seemed to make a game of judging and placing them based on appearance and stereotypes. Mrs. Turpin engaged with every occupant in the room, some of whom agreed with her beliefs and ideologies while one in particular, was not fond of Mrs. Turpin at all. Ruby Turpin who sees herself as a divine Christian, has

In "Living like Weasels", author Annie Dillard uses rhetorical devices to convey that life would be better lived solely in a physical capacity, governed by "necessity", executed by instinct. Through Dillard's use of descriptive imagery, indulging her audience, radical comparisons of nature and civilization and anecdotal evidence, this concept is ultimately conveyed.

“Could I change it if I wanted, can I rise above the flood? / Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?” (Mayer). A question posed by the artist John Mayer holds true for the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s most famous novel, Wise Blood. In this novel, O’Connor paints a picture of a small town in the heart of the Bible Belt and the internal struggle of its inhabitants. The protagonist, Hazel Motes, procures a twisted version of the Gospel and evangelizes to those who are made to believe they are lost. Yet, according to the teachings of Haze, this picture that humans are inherently sinful and in need of saving is false. In this novel, Flannery O’Connor uses inanimate objects to show the attempts of Haze to replace what he knows to be true. Enoch Emory, on the other hand, struggles with a curse he believes he was born with – wise blood. The prevalent themes of symbolism and imagery in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood represent the inner battle between spirituality and the human nature of rebellion.

She successfully uses made-up characters from the south to depict a rather bizarre religiosity of the protestant fundamentalists to show a spiritual life which is struggling to exist in what is rather a non-spiritual world. Flannery O'Connor's qualifications affected her to create the story "Revelation." an essential impact on the tale is her Southern experience. During her life-time, Southerners were extremely prejudiced towards other people of other cultures. They regarded that poor individuals were substandard to them; therefore, individuals were marked as different things and placed into different community sessions.

“Mrs. May’s bedroom window was low and faced on the east and the bull, silvered in the moonlight, stood under it, his head raised as if he listened- like some patient god come down to woo her- for a stir inside her room. The window was dark and the sound of her breathing too light to be carried outside. Clouds crossing the room blackened him and in the dark he began to tear at the hedge. Presently they passed and he appeared again in the same spot, chewing steadily, with a hedge-wreath that he had ripped loose for himself caught in the tips of his horns. When the moon drifted into retirement again, there was nothing to mark his place but the sound of steady chewing. Then

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.

Though this Southern Christian white woman is superficially pleasant and well-mannered, she conceals her ugly thoughts of class stratum cognizant of what is below her pedestal. A church going woman who treats slaves fairly, she believes her time volunteered and philosophy of doing things for others are enough to sanctify her ugliness on the inside. The omniscient narrator observes that “Mrs. Turpin felt at awful pity… it was one thing to be ugly and another to act ugly” (473) Ironically, Mrs. Turpin is the one who acts ugly. Arrogant about her station in life, when faced to choose between “a nigger or white-trash” she would plead with Jesus to “let [her] wait until there’s another place available” (472). Silently judging others she is pleased to not be anything less socially acceptable than she already is, and often occupies herself at night classifying people. Mrs. Turpin believed that you “had to have certain things before you could know certain things;” this consequently places her on a higher plane (474).

Turpin’s standards in her eyes. The readers can see through Mrs. Turpins thoughts and views how brutal and harsh she really is for example, when Mrs. Turpin is talking to herself and asks herself a question “If Jesus had said to her before he made her, there’s only two places available for you. You can either be a nigger or white trash, what would she have said?” Mrs. Turpin answers with “All right, make me a nigger then- but that don’t mean a trashy one. And he would have made her a neat clean respectable Negro-woman, herself but black.” (416).

O'Connor's typical use of violence and humor in her literary work broadens the characterization of the grandmother and the misfit throughout her story. She uses these elements in an effort to establish the characterization of her two main characters through the many

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge” emphasizes the hostility and racial discrimination that white southerners exhibited towards African Americans as a result of integration during the 1960’s. This short story focuses not only on the white American’s living in poverty, but also accentuates the ways in which two people born in different generations react to racial integration. Having descended from a formerly wealthy slave owning family, Julian’s mother, who remains unnamed, struggles to support both herself and her son after slavery is abolished. The family’s poverty becomes evident after the mother regrets purchasing a hat, claiming that if she returned it she could pay the gas bills instead (O’Connor, par. 10). As a struggling writer and typewriter salesman, presumably in his early 20’s, Julian claims to have “lost his faith” in a struggle to reason with his racist mother (O’Connor, par. 10). Describing himself to be “saturated in depression”, it becomes unmistakable that Julian feels resentful towards his mother for his upbringing and current position in life (O’Connor, par. 10). His mother, who takes pride in the way she raised him, reasons, “…if you know who you are, you can go anywhere”, prompting a quick disagreement from her son, where he argues, “[that’s] good for one generation only” (O’Connor, par. 16). Through observing

A theme is a generalized and unified statement about life that is suggested by a story. The theme is the most important element in a story. Through themes, authors communicate their ideas about a certain topic or objective. The theme, superiority must coincide with equality, in “Everything that Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor is developed adequately through the various literary elements the story holds. Through dialogue, characterization, and foreshadowing, the author reveals the theme.