Poor White Trash example essay topic

"A Revelation Of Flannery O'Connor' Essay, Research"A Revelation Of Flannery O'Connor' Much of Flannery O'Connor's work reflected her southern heritage. Some of her works were violent in nature. Racism was also prevalent. Being from the New South, many of the stereotypes of black Americans were used rather freely. Also it seems that many of her stories seem to mention a separation of the classes of people. Religion is often mentioned her stories.

Children often played an important character in many of her short stories. Flannery O'Connor's words describe much of her surroundings in vivid detail. Several of the short stories by Miss O'Connor revolve around southern people from either poor or working class families. Her southern heritage was often reflected by the way black people were looked down upon. Several of her stories like Revelation show how the blacks were referred to with derogatory racial slurs such as "nigger'. It was not only the blacks that were thought of with disdain; also the poor white people were often called poor "white trash'.

In the story Revelation being considered poor white trash was even worst then being black. In Revelation the main character Mrs. Turpin describes her thoughts that she has on several restless nights. She talks of an imaginary conversation she has with Jesus, in which she describes the two choices Jesus has given her. Either you can be a Marks 2 poor "white trash' or you can be a nigger Jesus tells her. After much turmoil the woman then decides", all right, make me a nigger then – but not a trashy one'. The story begins with Mrs. Turpin and her husband entering their doctor's waiting room and immediately Mrs. Turpin begins to assess the other patients present: a pleasant, well-dressed lady; a "white trash' woman and her mother and son; a fat adolescent with acne.

She and the pleasant woman strike up a conversation about the importance of refinement and good disposition. They discuss, for example, how you have to be nice to "niggers' to get them to do any work. When the "white trash' woman interjects her unwanted opinions into the conversation, she truly shows her ignorance and poor breeding. As the story goes on an ill-mannered ugly girl in Girl Scout shoes with heavy socks who was reading a book titled Human Development attacks Mrs. Turpin. During the unwarranted attack this young girl sticks and chokes Mrs. Turpin. He girl also insults her by calling her a fat wart hog and telling her to go back to Hell where she belongs.

The religious overtones are evident from the time that there is gospel music playing in the doctor's office where the story begins. Also she thanks God for giving her a little bit of everything. Be this she meant owning a little land and not being ugly. She also thanks him for giving her a good disposition. Later that evening, Mrs. Turpin talks to God again. Finally, while hosing down the hog pen that evening she whispers to God in a fierce voice, "What do you send me a message like that for?' "How am I a hog and me both?

How am I saved and from hell too?' she wants to know. This coupled with her conversation' with God shows how religion played a major part in Flannery O'Connor's Marks 3 "works. Flannery O'Connor describes the evening sky as "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 goes on to write", A visionary light settled into her eyes.

She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upwards from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling towards 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, her husband, 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 and 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'. The vision shows her how– considered by God no more worthy than white-trash, or niggers, or freaks– she can be both a wart hog before the judgment seat of God and saved, too. In painful clarity, Ruby Turpin recognizes, as one critic put it, "the inadequacy of her respectability and the shallowness of her values' (Pepin). With the vivid description of this scene, a person could probably close his eyes and picture this scene in his mind.

An ugly, nasty young woman is the mechanism through which the truth is revealed to Mrs. Turpin. The strange young woman is, in fact, reminiscent of an Old Marks 4 Testament prophet with her piercing eyes and her rude, uncompromising message. In the end, when Mrs. Turpin scolds God and demands that he justify himself to her, he answers with a vision in which, literally, the last (in Mrs. Turpin's scheme of reality) become first. This powerful scene also has biblical overtones: the scene in which Job, the righteous man who never did anything wrong, demands that Yahweh explain why he has allowed Job to suffer, and Yahweh speaks. (Coule han, Jack).