Flannery O’Connor‘s book of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge isn’t an easy read – especially if you are from the south.  It was published in 1965 so some of the language in it can be offensive to today’s readers, but I think that is part of Flannery’s intent as she used language and terms that were commonly used in the South. Many of her stories have tragic endings and all of them leave the reader with much to ponder. I have read both of Flannery’s books of short stories, but ‘Revelation’ in this book is my absolute favorite. 

This is the story of Mrs. Turpin. Most of the story takes place in the waiting room of a doctor’s office where she has taken her husband Claud. While she is having a conversation with another woman, Mrs. Turpin makes unconscious judgments about everyone in the room. Finally, an offended young girl throws a book at her and attacks her. The girl tells her, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.” 

Mrs. Turpin is left questioning her identity and what she has done to deserve to be born a white woman of privilege.  At the end of the story, Mrs. Turpin has a vision. 

“There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk. She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it, a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward 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 and 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, common sense, and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.”