Symbolic Themes in "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor

1. “Revelation” Flannery O’Connor

2. Some Possible Symbols? In completing the story, record your interpretations of each. . . Shoes. . . Why does Mrs. Turpin notice people’s feet? What might be significant about this fact, especially in considering how she sees others? Yellow. . . The color is mentioned several times. . . “the yellow curtain”. . . The “nurse with the highest stack of yellow hair Mrs. Turpin had ever seen,” and the clock face “encased in a brass sunburst.” What might the color mean in the story’s context? Hearing. . . Mrs. Turpin “didn’t catch every word. . .”Does she really want to hear every word? How is her (and more notably, our) perception selective?

3. Book. . . . “The book struck her directly over the left eye.” What is the significance of Mary Grace smashing her with the book? And further, what is with the name “Mary Grace?” Vision. . . .”All at once her vision narrowed and she saw everything as if it were happening in a small room far away, or as if she were looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope.” What does this distortion in her vision mean? Liberal Arts. . . Mary Grace is majoring in liberal arts at Wellesley College. Claude’s brain. . . .In her “revelation” Mrs. Turpin sees that “At any moment a bigger truck might smash into it and scatter Claude’s and niggers’ brains all over the road.”

4. Purple. . . “There was only a purple streak through the sky. . . “ This is the color presented when Mrs. Turpin has her “revelation.” O’Connor, perhaps in line with Catholic theology, saw conversion more as a process than as a single point in time, a “once and for all event.” Once the process is begun, “you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity. . . You have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that. . . “

5. Calvinism Criticized? The effect produced by the extreme Calvinist mindset of “faith alone” (Sola Fide), a system that claims objectivity but in some ways a highly subjective standpoint, can lead to a sense of self-righteousness, an extension of pride. Questioning one’s faith, or doubt, will often be considered a weakness. Intellectual pride, and a resultant faith incompatible with authentic Christianity, may be the result. You may not be a Calvinist, but the problem is no different for us. . . “I’m in, and she’s not!” Matthew 18:1-5 . . . To enter the Kingdom of heaven we must become like little children. . . Consider Luke 14:7-14. . . Addressed to those who occupy a high place at the banquet and must, with embarrassment, surrender to a latecomer of greater importance.

6. In a letter to a close friend O’Connor once wrote: “We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord.” (I recall my own experience with a hitch-hiker in Florida.) Up until the incident in the waiting room, Ruby is one of those numerous people (me? Or you?) who, convinced of her goodness, causes “drama” wherever she goes. Mary Grace—God’s unlikely instrument to wake Ruby up—hurls both the book and the insult that allow the Grace of God to finally penetrate the hard shell of Ruby’s ego.

7. Consider the ending of the story: Almost like an image of Jacob’s ladder Note the color red and its use “The flames of heaven may be hotter than the flames of hell. . .” “If you think you understand the Gospel, you really don’t. . . “ Tim Keller—a Calvinist by the way

8. What is significance of the pigs being mentioned early on, and then with Mrs. Turpin going out to clean them near the conclusion of the story? Deuteronomy 24:17ff. “But you shall remember. . . “ Are there times that “revelations” occur at the most unexpected times or in the most unexpected ways? We have mistakenly come to think that God’s revelation will always be a “glorious” and “uplifting” experience. . . This notion is far from the truth and the reason that most of us miss numerous opportunities for spiritual and personal growth. . . . On what do we base the certainty of our faith, especially given our post-modern paradigm?