Revelation

We start seeing Mrs. Turpin’s good disposition the moment she enters the doctor’s waiting room.

Despite the fact that she is very fat, she willingly offers her husband Mr. Turpin the only vacant chair remaining in the room. She has the right to ask the little boy to vacate the chair he is seated on but she takes it cool and insists that his husband hold onto the seat when he offers to stand up. She can’t let him stand up while he has ulcer on his leg. No one in the waiting room is kind and courteous enough to talk to the black boy who brings the tray from the drugs store except Mrs. Turpin.

Mrs. Turpin is a good Christian as her philosophy in life is to help anyone in need irrespective of the color of their skin. She tends to join in the gospel hymn that was playing in the radio. Mrs. Turpin is grateful to the niggers who pick cotton for her.

She has learnt to love them and always greats them with respect. She ensures her husband takes them home with their vehicle and she is always waiting for them with a bucket of ice water every time they come back from the field. She also goes to church always. Asals, F. (1982).

Mrs. Turpin is so judgmental. The fact that she lacks a chair to sit on makes her start blaming the doctor for not making arrangements of having many seats. She sees the doctor as the selfish and mean type of people who are only interested in siphoning money from his patients but cares less about their welfare. She thinks that she could run the clinic better just because there is an ash tray that has not been emptied. She terms the fat girl next to her as ugly just because the girl’s face is blue with acne and she is wearing a scowl face.

She is racist as she hates niggers and has in the past been buttering them. She could never imagine being one of them ever in her life and she sees them as the only ones who can do her farm work. She discriminates against her fellow white Americans; she calls them white-trash. Her self-righteousness is portrayed when she ranks people according to how rich they are every time before she sleeps. She also boasts that her hogs are far much cleaner than some children. She believes that the white-trash woman can’t own a hog.

She is a neo-Nazi because she believes that niggers are in America in order to improve their dark color by marrying the white people. She fails to understand that niggers don’t hate their skin unlike her who hates them. Immediately Mrs. Turpin enters the doctor’s waiting room, the fat girl, Mary Grace does not like her. Mrs. Turpin’s effort to give the girl a friendly smile is turned down by a scowl and an annoyed face.

The girl is annoyed with Mrs. Turpin who keeps on talking and distracting her while reading. The fat girl warns Mrs. Turpin with her facial expression to keep quiet and leave her alone but she ignores her. When Mary’s mother starts to ridicule her daughter, Mary Grace gets angry when Mrs. Turpin joins in the conversation and that’s when Mary throws a book at her, calls her an old wart hog and tells her to go back to hell.

No matter how Mrs. Turpin tried to deny all those allegations made to her, Mary’s words, eyes and the tone in her voice were clear and directed to her. The garbled echo that bounces back to her makes her feels that the message is probably from God. She fails to understand why God was angry with her despite her efforts to help others, work hard and her strong participation in the church. She sees a vision where all those people she hated including the niggers, white-trash and lunatics go to heaven while her type burn in hell.