Revelation by Flannery O'connor

Revelation is a short story surrounding Mrs. Turpin, an opinionated, blunt woman, who faces an internal struggle after an encounter at the Doctor's office. This story is based sometime around the mid 1900s when segregation, especially in the South, was still very prominent, and that is very evident throughout this story. It is interesting to see the way in which Mrs. Turpin, along with the other women and men in the doctors office, discuss African Americans in such a vulgar tone. One part of the story that I found particularly though provoking was as Mrs. Turpin was discussing how she wished she could ship all of African Americans back to Africa, even though that was not plausible. At one point Mrs. Turpin says," they're going to stay here where they can go to New York and marry white folks and improve their color. Thats what they all want to do, every one of them, improve their color (134)". I found this extremely shocking and obscene because Mrs. Turpin of the way she uses the word "improve". Not only does this quote show the way in which Mrs. Turpin views the aspirations of African Americans, but she generalizes them and degrades them immensely. This is also diminishing the culture of African Americans and assuming that they would want to shift their culture to white culture and even shift the color of their own skin.
Another part of the short story that I found interesting was directly after this comment as a song begins to play and says," We'll all blank along, together, and all along the bank, we'll help each other out (135)". Immediately I found this extremely ironic, due to the conversation that had been had previously, although what was even more ironic is how this song reminded Mrs. Turpin of how helpful and kind of a human she was herself. This shows just how oblivious and ignorant she was to believe that she could be so crude to African Americans. Through this encounter specifically, I feel that Mrs. Turpin considers African Americans as so inferior that she almost dehumanizes them, which allows her to not feel guilty for the way that she treats them.