Animal Analysis: The Role of Pigs in O'Connor's "Revelation"

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[...] Animal Analysis: The Role of Pigs in O'Connor's "Revelation" "Despite her brief life and relatively modest output, [Flannery O'Connor's] work is regarded as among the most distinguished American fiction of the mid-twentieth century," writes Michael Meyer, author of The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature (317). One of the many reasons her work is so remarkable is because of her utilization of literary devices, such as characterization and symbolism. A prime example of this is the pigs in her short story "Revelation". [...]

[...] This is because pigs are traditionally thought of as dirty animals, and the one quality that Mrs. Turpin thinks the lower classes embody most is dirtiness. She constantly says how dirty the lower classes are. For instance, at the doctor's office, she describes the "white-trashy" woman's clothes as "gritty-looking" and her hair as "dirty yellow" (343). And later, when the same woman tells Mrs. Turpin that she bought jewelry with her green stamps, Mrs. Turpin replies to herself that she "ought to have got [you] a wash rag and some soap" (341). [...]

[...] Also, she is adamant about the fact that her pigs live in a parlor” and not in a pigsty (343). "'Their feet never touch the ground,'" she tells the women in the waiting room, have a pig parlor that's where you raise them on concrete [ . ] and Claud scoots them down with the hose every afternoon and washes off the floor'" (343). She cannot comprehend how something that is clean on the outside can be "dirty" on the inside. [...]