"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "Revelation"
The grandmother in Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and Ruby Turpin in her story "Revelation" have much in common. The grandmother chatters incessantly, oblivious to the annoyance she is causing others and preoccupied with what she wants to the exclusion of anyone else's feelings and needs. Ruby is outwardly pleasant to everyone but inwardly critical, because she again is preoccupied with her own needs and makes constant comparisons between herself, whom she holds in high esteem, and others around her, most of whom she finds fault with. Both women are Christian, and both suffer violence at the hands of another. Shinn (ix) points out that O'Connor "used violence to convey her vision because she knew that the violence of rejection in the modern world demands an equal violence of redemption-man needs to be struck by mercy; God must overpower him."
In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the grandmother's relentless demand to see a plantation forces her son to drive the vacationing family off course, and they have an accident as their car overturns. It is thus thanks to her selfish meddling that every member of the family is killed. The grandmother is the last to die, and she attempts to witness to the killer, but when she reaches out in compassion and touches him, he shoots her three times through the chest. Although she extends mercy to him, he does not receive it and is not changed. He is a man without Christ, and he is miserable, telling his son, "It's no real pleasure in life" (O'Connor).
In "Revelation," Ruby is mentally critiquing virtually everyone around her at the doctor's office when an angry, demented girl throws a book at her and commands her, "Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog" (O'Connor 93). This mean-spirited comment affects Ruby so deeply, offending her, that she talks to God about it and asks Hi...