The short story "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor, portrays a story of a woman who thinks she is superior to everyone else and is caught up in the illusion she is living the right way by God. The majority of the story is in a doctor's waiting room where Mrs. Turpin has taken her husband Claud for treatment. In the waiting room, she occupies her thoughts by putting the patients into categories. They are put in many different categories. One girl in the waiting room she referred to as fat and acne face, an elderly woman and her child are referred to as white trash, and another woman in the room was just common, not white trash. Through Mrs. Turpin's thoughts the author conveys that individuals judge others by what's on the outside. Mrs. Turpin believes she is living the way God would want her to, but it is hypocritical because God has the only authority to judge any human being, according to the bible. .
At night, she occupies herself by classifying groups of people into a survival pyramid. She uses cliches that clearly show how she views herself compared to others. "On the bottom of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she would have been if she had been one, but most of them; next to them not above, just away from were the white trash, then above them the home owners, then the home and landowners" (Paragraph 24). Mrs. Turpin and Claud are home and land owners, so she thinks very highly of herself compared to the other classes of people. This shows that a person's race and financial status can determine how close to God someone is. She puts herself higher up on the pile and closer to God. .
Turpin also judges the ugly girl by where she is from, which is up north. Turpin is from the south, and thinks very highly of her upbringing. However, when Mrs. Turpin finds out the ugly girl is from the north, she says to herself that explains why the girl has a lack of good manners.
