Flannery O’Connor on the Redeemed
TIM writes:
In the comments in the entry “Seeking a New Life after Lesbianism,” Leo Walker mentions his “crazy vision of the Army of the Redeemed marching into Heaven,” and gives your correspondent L.M. advice which I hope she is truly able to hear: we are all damaged goods. Thinking about this comment, I was reminded of the ending to the great Flannery O’Connor short story “Revelation.”
In the final scene, the garrulous and vain protagonist Ruby Turpin, who prides herself a “respectable and proper” Southern woman, is recovering from a shock she received earlier in the story. In a doctor’s waiting room, Ruby’s incessant and nosy chatter had raised the ire of an ill-tempered teenage girl who had thrown a book at her and told her “Go back to hell, you old wart hog.”



