The critic, writer, and professor Hilton Als used "Revelation" to demonstrate the author's "most profound gift ... her ability to describe impartially the bourgeoisie she was born into, to depict with humor and without judgment her rapidly crumbling social order.

""Painted in broad strokes the story ['Revelation'] explores how Mrs. Turpin, a woman who embodies what I’ve been calling the Southern virtue of gracious living, is slowly unhinged after being told to 'Go back to hell where you come from, you old wart hog'.

...through her doggedly Christian narrative voice, O’Connor suggests again and again that the Southern ideal of a graceful woman is morally suspect, a tradition which ultimately depends on repugnant distinctions based on race and class.

The allusion foreshadows the protagonist's experience in the story, and also highlights the divine disapproval of inappropriate use of prayer, affirms doubt about the prospect for Ruby Turpin's salvation, and the waiting room's likeness as a temple.

The injury of Claud, Mrs. Turpin's husband, from being kicked in the leg by a cow, is the reason for the couple's appearance at a doctor's waiting room, that serves as a place where characters of the story examine and judge each other.

Soon after his departure, which sucks air out of the room (de-pressurizing it from the tension caused by his presence), the poor "white-trashy" mother complains that all black people should be sent back to Africa "wher they come from in the first place" — a response that would not surprise the delivery boy though his tactic was successful by avoiding any current or future direct confrontation, though at the cost of appearing lazy and unintelligent.

Ruby Turpin may have been especially receptive, having an active inner-life that involves imaginative conversations with Jesus, being childless (unlike the other women in the waiting room) and unfamiliar with the demon-like expressions of children, and seems to be able to recall her Bible lessons very well.

Mrs. Turpin detects the prophet's supernatural nature after Mary Grace's mother ends discussion about the waiting room clock (God) by mentioning she uses trading stamps to acquire "contour sheets": "The daughter slammed her book shut.

In "Revelation", Mary Grace's mission as a prophet is placed in jeopardy as an ambulance takes to her to a mental hospital, and is a heroine for her suffering in performance of her duty to God to help save Ruby Turpin.

The plot of "Revelation" starts with an examination of the character, Mrs. Ruby Turpin, from the perspectives of her inner life and her behavior while conversing with adults representing a cross-section of white Southern classes in a doctor's small, congested, unadorned waiting room.

Gospel music triggers a demonstration of Mrs. Turpin's inner thoughts about her hierarchical beliefs based on race and personal wealth that has poor black and white "trash" at the very bottom, and her notion that most people, except herself, are in a box car heading to a gas oven.

Mary Grace is enraged that the small talk has disrupted her reading of a book entitled Human Development and displays her anger through facial expressions and glares from penetrating blue eyes directed at and received by Mrs. Turpin.

The primary theme of "Revelation" is Christian salvation, and its plot demonstrates the author's application of Catholic theology to judge whether or not a conformist Protestant Southern woman, Ruby Turpin, can really be redeemed.

For the Roman Catholic Church, pride is considered the "queen of all vices" and is defined as "the excessive love of one's own excellence", and for a character like Ruby Turpin, "regards himself as the source of such advantages as he may discern in himself, or because, whilst admitted that God has bestowed them, he reputes this to have been in response to his own merits, or because he attributes to himself gifts which he has not; or, finally, because even when these are real he unreasonably looks to be put ahead of others."

"[33] The protagonist learns by witnessing a vision of Particular Judgment that her righteousness about race and class are wrong and that her satisfaction with the Southern social order that she thanked Jesus for not changing provides a rationale for purgation.

"[34]The cost of the assault to the protagonist is suffering, humiliation, and the realization that if she accepts the revelation as divine grace she must scrap her identity as a gracious Southern woman with its social norms based on corruptions of the Christian virtues.

The story includes a scene in the protagonist's bedroom where "Occasionally she [Ruby Turpin] raised her fist and made small stabbing motions over her chest as if she were defending her innocence to invisible guests who were like the comforters of Job, reasonable-seeming but wrong."

In contrast, O'Connor's Ruby Turpin institutes her own measure of justice,[39] believing in her own Christian perfection in that she outrageously considers herself a modern-day Job (after failing to find any fault in herself while laying-down in bed) and is blind to the grotesque conformity and self-righteousness expressed as racism and class prejudice that are part of the foundation of an oppressive society.

'"O'Connor realizes the five verses in "Revelation" in the context of Mrs. Turpin's negligence as an echo of her question that demolishes her self-image as a Job: "The color of everything, field and crimson sky, burned for a moment with a transparent intensity.

Immediately prior to the start of her vision (and after Claud safely returns home), in her apparent relief and humbled by the realization she is imperfect, Ruby Turpin contemplates with her pigs while standing over them (the same perspective as God's) and "with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge".

As the protagonist returns to her house from the pig parlor in the growing darkness, she recognizes her shameful misguided righteousness and oppressive beliefs as she is stranded on Earth while she hears others ascend to Heaven.

The vision Mrs. Turpin views from her pig parlor allude to Bible parables familiar to faithful Christians that can strike-down and replace faulty spiritual beliefs and aim her away from further sin toward redemption.

According to the Prologue, individuals have the responsibility to guard their own soul against the serpent's attacks to stay on the metaphorical path toward salvation that began with baptism, and in particular, warns about entering into water, the realm of "the dragon of the sea who is laying these plots against you".

The item reads: "Great is the Baptism that lies before you: a ransom to captives; a remission of offenses; a death of sin; a new-birth of the soul; a garment of light; a holy indissoluble seal; a chariot to heaven; the delight of Paradise; a welcome into the kingdom; the gift of adoption!

The doctor's waiting room is the setting for exhibiting the interactions between a cross section of early 1960s white Southern society that is implicitly being forced to experience the struggles by and for black Americans to attain social, economic, and political equality.

"[54]The waiting room with its radio permeating the space with gospel songs that could make it a place for both physical and spiritual healing is defiled by overt hate, resentment, and the lack of compassion for the infirm.

"[60] In Ruby Turpin's vision from her pig palor, she witnesses whole "companies of white-trash", "bands of black niggers", and "battalions of freaks and lunatics" ascend to Heaven in an image of joyous, disorderly Christian soldiers (miles Christianus) that contrasts with the orderly, marching, burning "tribe" of her own kind.

[citation needed] The white robes worn by black people ascending to Heaven alludes to the Book of Revelation chapter 7 where God gives "Praise of the Great Multitude of the Redeemed.

The story ends with the hope that she will use her courage to gain her redemption since the lesson of the vision is that the baptized may be subjected to purgation for their sins before ascending to Heaven, a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.

"[27] The progress of Ruby Turpin's soul for achieving salvation to be with God is consistent with the title of the book Everything That Rises Must Converge, which coincides with the what Ralph Wood emphasized as the "central premise of her work" – "the conviction that the ultimate issue of our lives depends on our own reception or rejection of grace".