Mail Archive of the old Santa Clara Valley Lutheran Parish

Subject: Re: Text Study Group: Flannery O'conner

Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:17:56 -0700 (PDT)

From: David Bonde <dkbonde@gmail.com>

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Subject: Re: Text Study Group: Flannery O'conner
From: David Bonde <dkbonde@gmail.com>
To: SCVLP <scvlp@googlegroups.com>
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Here is the ending of =93Revelation.=94  The second to last line in the
second  paragraph is the one I to which I referred.  If you=92ve never
read Flannery O=92Connor I highly recommend it.


Mrs. Turpin stood there, her gaze fixed on the highway, all her
muscles rigid, until in five or six minutes the truck reappeared,
returning.  Then like a monumental statue come to life, she bent her
head slowly down and gazed, as if through the very heart of mystery,
down into the pig parlor at the hogs.  They had settled all in one
corner around the old sow who was grunting softly.  A red glow
suffused them.  They appeared to pan with a secret life.

Until the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin
remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing
some abysmal life-giving knowledge.  At last she lifted her head.
There was 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 raised her hands from the side of the pen in a
gesture hieratic and profound.  A visionary light settled in her
eyes.  She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward
from the earth through a field of living fire.  Upon it a vast horde
of souls were rumbling toward 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, 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.  She lowered her hands and gripped the
rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay
ahead.  In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was,
immobile.

At length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way
on the darkening path to the house.  In the woods around her the
invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the
voices of souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting
hallelujah.


On Jul 17, 6:40 pm, David Bonde <dkbo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The Short Story I mentioned is "Revelation' and while I haven't laid
> my hands on my copy yet for that key line, here is the wikipedia link
> to this story
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_%28short_story%29