Literary Analysis on Revelation

Literary Analysis
“Revelation”
Flannery O’Connor short story entitled “Revelation” was swayed by her personal upbringing in the South. She lived in the time where people from the South were very intolerant and narrow-minded towards people who had a different lifestyle and who were of a different race. Because Southerners believed people who did not live up to their wealth or status were inferior, it offered O’Connor the exact descriptions she wanted for the characters in this story. The main character in this story, Mrs. Turpin, is extremely prejudice and uses many terms of racial terminology. All of the characters in this story are well-known by their physical looks, and some are well-known by the racial terms used in the story. Mrs. Turpin said that the higher class women were “well-dressed and pleasant.” Another time she refers to a poor woman as “white trashy” and a teenage female as “ugly.” We are able to understand the lifestyle of the South that Flannery O’Connor was a part of in her childhood by her choice of words in this story. An example, when Mrs. Turpin would talk to her black laborers. There seems to be a major and minor social divergence in the story. The minor conflict is between the “white trash” woman and Mrs. Turpin; the problem stems from Mrs. Turpin thinking that she is in a higher class than this particular “white-trash” woman and most people. Mrs. Turpin is disgusted because the “white-trash” woman interrupted Mrs. Turpin’s conversation with someone else. In the story we are given the image that not only is the woman “white-trash” but she is uneducated and unintelligent. This is another example made clear to the readers of the background of O’Connor because the character is not given a real name but a disparaging title. The major conflict of this story occurs with the teenage girl and Mrs. Turpin. The conflict is not given away at one point in the story but gradually develops between the two women with many different facial