Flannery O"Connor"s short story "Revelation" is the perfect example of dramatic irony. O"Connor gives us, the reader, an insight into two sides of the central character, Ruby Turpin. Ruby Turpin sees herself as a kind person with a good disposition. As a reader we can see a very different side of Ruby Turpin.

             Ruby Turpin sees herself as "a respectable, hard-working, church-going woman." (Pg. 989) Ruby Turpin measures all things and sees all people through the frame of her own ego. Ruby likes to wonder what type of person she would have chosen to be if she couldn"t have been herself. She would have "wiggled and squirmed and begged and pleaded" (Pg. 981) not to have been made "a nigger or white trash" (Pg. 981). Another of her intellectual hobbies is to classify others. O"Connor writes "Mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night naming the classes of people" (Pg. 981). Ruby Turpin"s classifications of others are based solely on her standards of acceptability. She is especially critical of blacks and people she sees as poor white trash. On Ruby Turpin"s social scale colored people are "on the bottom of the heap" (Pg. 981). "Then next to them--not above, just away from--were the white trash; then above them were the home-owners, and above them the home-and-land owners, to which she and Claud belonged. Above she and Claud were people with a lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land" (Pg. 981-982). Ruby Turpin clings to her good works and her social class as a badge of worthiness. She says her philosophy of life is to "help anybody out that needed it" (Pg. 985) "She never spared herself when she found somebody in need, whether they were white or black, trash or decent" (Pg. 985) .

             Flannery O"Connor uses the hog as a symbol of unredeemed human nature. Just as no amount of cleansing will ever change the essence of the hog, no amount of good works or intellectual justification will change the nature of human beings.