Short Story: Revelation

Overview
Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation" (1964) follows Mrs. Ruby Turpin, a self-satisfied, devoutly Roman Catholic Southern woman whose rigid social assumptions and judgments are disrupted by a short, violent confrontation in a doctor's waiting room. The story moves from domestic complacency to a moment of spiritual crisis, culminating in a startling, ambiguous vision that forces reappraisal of personal righteousness, social hierarchy, and the nature of grace.
O'Connor blends sharp regional detail, dark humor, and theological intensity to expose pride and prejudice shaped by class, race, and self-righteousness. The narrative tone alternates between satirical and prophetic, guiding readers toward a moral reckoning that is as unsettling as it is illuminating.

Plot Summary
The narrative opens with Mrs. Turpin and her husband, Claud, returning from a visit to the physician. Ruby delights in reaffirming her perceived place in a divinely ordered social pecking order, mentally ranking people below her according to race, class, and manners. Her smugness is punctured when a disturbed young woman named Mary Grace, who had been reading at the doctor's office, suddenly throws a book at Ruby and taunts her with a brutal, momentary condemnation.
After the throw, Mary Grace's words, calling Ruby "a wart hog from hell" and accusing her of being blind to her own sin, linger like an indictment. Back at home, Ruby tries to rationalize the attack, seeking affirmation from Claud and retreating to prayer, yet the encounter torments her. Later that night, while dozing on the porch, Ruby experiences a profound, ambiguous vision: a procession of souls passing into heaven, where those she has considered lowly are ahead, and she finds herself last, confronted with the reality of divine judgment and mercy beyond her social metrics.

Main Characters
Mrs. Ruby Turpin is proud, pious, and fiercely committed to a social theology that equates earthly status with divine favor. Her self-image rests on a carefully constructed hierarchy; her world is ordered by comparisons that validate her comfort and certainty. Claud Turpin shares Ruby's simple faith and contentment but lacks her sharpness of judgment and self-awareness.
Mary Grace serves as catalyst and prophetic voice, a physically awkward, intellectual young woman whose violent act and cryptic message pierce Ruby's complacency. Secondary figures, such as the black field hands Ruby surveys and the other patients in the waiting room, populate the moral landscape, representing the human faces Ruby ranks and ultimately must reckon with.

Themes and Symbols
Pride and humility are at the narrative's core: Ruby's spiritual blindness stems from pride that masquerades as piety. O'Connor interrogates how religious language and ritual can be used to justify social domination, revealing the spiritual danger of equating moral worth with social position. The story also explores grace as disruptive and unconcerned with human expectations; divine mercy arrives in forms that undermine established hierarchies.
Symbols such as the doctor's waiting room, the thrown book, and Ruby's nighttime vision crystallize the moral movement from self-assuredness to unsettling revelation. The "revelation" itself functions as both judgment and potential salvation: a vision that threatens Ruby's identity yet opens a painful path toward spiritual sight.

Significance
"Revelation" epitomizes O'Connor's gift for combining grotesque incident with theological urgency, forcing readers to confront uncomfortable questions about sin, judgment, and redemption. The story resists neat resolutions; its power lies in the ambiguity of Ruby's fate and the persistent challenge to social and spiritual complacency. As a study of Southern manners and moral blindness, it remains a disquieting and richly layered exploration of how grace can expose and overturn human pretensions.