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Homework Assignment I: Read the short story “Revelation,” by…
Homework Assignment I: Read the short story “Revelation,” by Flannery O’Connor. Before you read it and answer the questions, please note the following information:
This story was written in 1964, and it takes place in the American south, where the author (a white woman) lived most of her life (in the state of Georgia). Again, the “n” word is used over and over in this story, but that does not make the author a racist…the word “colored” is also used in the story to describe African-American people. Like William Faulkner, who wrote “Dry September,” she wrote fiction that showed people’s attitudes and social ways that had surrounded her from birth. The action of the story seems to take place at the time it was written (mid-1960s), in the era of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. A few unfamilar things are mentioned in the story: 1) One of the women in the doctor’s office has a “snuff-stained” lips and nose–using “snuff” was sort of like vaping or smoking…except the tobacco was powdered, not heated or set on fire, and inhaled up the nose, but the effects of the nicotine were the same; 2) the same woman mentions, in the doctor’s office, that a clock like the one on the wall could be gotten through “green stamps.” “Green stamps” were like the “rewards programs” that so many stores have today, but they worked differently. If you bought groceries at a store that gave green stamps, the cashier would give you sheets of stamps that you would then moisten and paste into a collection book. A catalog of rewards was available, to look through, to see what could be bought with however many books of stamps. You would have to go to a special “green stamp redemption center” to trade your books of stamps in for whatever reward you wanted. One woman in the story mentions that she gets sheets for her bed, with her green stamps.
As you read the story, gather details and then type detailed answers for these questions:
1. On page 320, what keeps Mrs. Turpin up at night? What does she think about when she is trying to sleep? What does she seem obsessed with, and why might she be thinking so hard about this?
2. Also on page 320, at the end of the long paragraph in the middle of the page, the narrator states, “by the time she had fallen asleep all the classes of people were moiling and roiling around in her head, and she would dream they were all crammed in together in a box car, being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.” This thought is pretty horrifying, but what is Mrs. Turpin referring to, here, and why might “all the classes of people” being “all crammed together” be especially horrifying for her?
3. Make a list of details from the story that show Mrs. Turpin’s attitudes toward people’s race and social class.
4. There is an “ugly girl” in the doctor’s office, who we learn is named Mary Grace. She goes to Wellesley College, in Boston, opened in 1875, and whose founders believed in educational opportunity for women, and that the college should prepare women for “…great conflicts, for vast reforms in social life.” Why might this be important to the story, and what might it have to do with the girl’s anger in the doctor’s office?
5. On page 325, Mrs. Turpin says “Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!” and “Oh thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!” Right after this, Mary Grace throws a book at Mrs. Turpin’s face, and she then attacks Mrs. Turpin, trying to strangle her. On page 326, even, she tells Mrs. Turpin to “Go back to hell where you came from, you old warthog.” Look over pages 324 and 325 carefully, and consider the rest of the story so far, and try to list as many factors or reasons as you can, for why the girl attacks Mrs. Turpin, and for why she is so angry at her.
6. At the top of page 329, Mrs. Turpin explains how she was attacked, to her African-American farm helpers, and they sympathize with her. However, in Mrs. Turpin’s telling of the story to them, what does she choose to leave out?
7. Mrs. Turpin does a lot of talking to God in the final pages of the story. Finally, read the last paragraph on page 331, and onto page 332, very carefully. What does she see, in her vision of the “purple streak in the sky?” And, where does she see people like Claud and herself, and what is happening to them? Does this resemble anything from earlier in the story, and what might this vision be showing her?
