Essay Mrs. Turpin in Flannery O’Connor’s Revelation

    “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” one of O’Connor’s best works, describes a family on a trip to Florida and their encounter with an escaped prisoner, The Misfit. Although “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is an early work in O’Connor’s career, it contains many of the elements which are used in the majority of her short stories. The grandmother, a selfish and deceitful woman, is a recipient of a moment of grace, despite her many flaws and sins. A moment of grace is a revelation of truth. When the grandmother calls The Misfit her child and reaches out to touch him, the grandmother has a moment of grace that enabled her to see The Misfit as a suffering human being who she is obligated to love. The grandmother realizes that nothing will stop The Misfit from killing her but she reaches out to him despite this. The Misfit rejects her love and kills her anyway. This moment of grace is very important

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.

Turpin had to bring her husband, Claud, for medical attention due to a leg ulcer. Upon entrance, Mrs. Turpin glances around seemingly taking notes of every occupant and placing them into socioeconomic categories solely based on appearance and preconceived notions. Mrs. Turpin specifically notices a large acne ridden teenage girl reading a book titled “Human Development,” who wears a scowl on her face as if it were specifically for her. Mrs. Turpin begins to discuss with the other occupants in the room about her beliefs and her religious values. While in conversation with Mrs. Hopewell, Mrs. Turpin learned the name of the large scowl-faced girl was named Mary Grace. Mary Grace, a round character in the story, seemed to have a personal vendetta against Mrs. Turpin, one that Mary Grace was not afraid to show. Grace's mother, Mrs. Hopewell rambled on about how educated her daughter was, but that it was a shame she never smiled or expressed gratitude. Mrs. Turpin expressed how grateful and blessed she is, until she is struck in the head by the book Grace was reading earlier. Mary Grace whispers, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old warthog” (393). Those words stuck with Mrs. Turpin, dwelling in her thoughts until they enraged her. Mrs. Turpin starts screaming to the sky that she is not what that girl called her, then as quickly as her rage came, a revelation overcame her

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 Misfit and the Mystery of Evil, John Desmond suggests that the story is an allusion to the teachings of Christianity (Desmond). The author asserts that people should strive to live without necessarily having to prioritize trivial social issues. According to the author, the Grandmother commits the mistake of overindulging in her apparent superiority as compared

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.

incidents that built up to the actual conflict do not give away what is going to

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).

Flannery O’Connor, undoubtedly one of the most well-read authors of the early 20th Century, had many strong themes deeply embedded within all her writings. Two of her most prominent and poignant themes were Christianity and racism. By analyzing, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” these two themes jump out at the reader. Growing up in the mid-1920’s in Georgia was a huge influence on O’Connor. Less than a decade before her birth, Georgia was much different than it was at her birth. Slaves labored tirelessly on their master’s plantations and were indeed a facet of everyday life. However, as the Civil War ended and Reconstruction began, slaves were not easily assimilated into Southern culture. Thus, O’Connor grew up in a highly racist area that mourned the fact that slaves were now to be treated as “equals.” In her everyday life in Georgia, O’Connor encountered countless citizens who were not shy in expressing their discontent toward the black race. This indeed was a guiding influence and inspiration in her fiction writing. The other guiding influence in her life that became a major theme in her writing was religion. Flannery O 'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of a Catholic family. The region was part of the 'Christ-haunted ' Bible belt of the Southern States. The spiritual heritage of the region profoundly shaped O 'Connor 's writing as described in her essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" (1969). Many

In most of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories a number of characters have a hard time seeing an ultimate reality in their life. They tend to have a distorted grasp on reality but not all in the same way. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Misfit and the Grandmother are prime examples. The actions and the way of life of the Misfit and Grandmother are mostly due to the fact that they are living in an false reality where they are in their own little world, where in the Misfit’s world everything goes with no worry of repercussion in the Grandmother’s case she can do no wrong because she has a false perception of what is right.

From the immature and shallow perspective of Scout, Mrs Dubose gives us the impression of being a bitter, racist, elderly woman. Although, if we were to closely examine her struggles we would discover she is extremely courageous and in need of our kindness. Mrs

Turpin did. Somehow, we have to right the wrong, and clear our conscience, come to grips with it and learn to live with how we are, or change. Mrs. Turpin was one of the lucky ones; she saw a vision in the sky, which helped clear things up for her. “A visionary light settled in her eyes, she saw the streak as vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire: upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling towards heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting, clapping, and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others, with great dignity; accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense. They alone were on key” (331). “Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away” (332). Ultimately, Mrs. Turpin was shown that no matter what she thought of herself or how she judged others, God makes his own decisions and in the end, it may surprise us all, just as it did Mrs.

In “A good man is hard to find”, revelations” and “Everything that rises must converge” by Flannery O’Connor clearly portray a theme of racism based on selfishness, pride and grace. All three main characters undergo a prophecy like moment that eventually leads to the loss of their dignity and selfish attitude and in turn they each achieve grace. This paper will provide a detailed analysis on how all three main characters go from being selfish to eventually self-analyzing themselves and in turn they mature and gain grace and change the way they view others. My investigation of these stories will show how each protagonist had to experience some form of tragedy in order to become self-aware of the way people perceive them. O’Connor presents in these stories how each main character and also in reality people in life need to be brought to a tragic like moment in life that causes them to not continue in the ways they are accustomed to.

She comes to heaven to see her son, but is told that he cannot see her until she is more “solid.” The mother asks how she can accomplish this and the “bright spirit” says by loving and believing in God. The mother thinks that what she is doing is loving her son, but she cannot know how to love as a mother without first knowing how to love God. She was trying to use God as a means to her son. She says that she cannot grow to love a God that keeps her away from her son. This conversation between her and Reginald continues for a while and the narrator does not see how it ends. The woman was driven by purely selfish motivations. She did not want the best for her son, if she had the chance to drag Michael down to Hell to be with her she would have. The woman was unable to give up her selfishness and trust that she would see her son in time, but first she had to better herself.