Revelation is a great example of what I think O'Conner tries to do to her readers. She loves to yank that rung out from under your feet and drop you hard to the bottom of the ladder. It may not be quite so painful for us as it is her characters, but we could also simply find ourselves in denial. That was especially easy for me to fall victim to in Everything that Rises must Converge. Love that story! It is so easy to identify with Julian and disdain his mother. We are waiting with him in anticipation of her "face" experience, on the edge of our seats to discover her reaction to the black woman's hat. Her death is a surprise to the reader, shocking us like it does Julian into the realization that our enjoyment has all gone too far. We recognize that Julian is the one who has had the rung yanked out form under him and we've been standing with him. I viewed him as he did himself as somehow better than these women on the bus and better than his mother. By the end of the story I could see that as an educated man he deemed himself somehow better then others as well. He believed he would have been able to appreciated his grandfather's old mansion more then others, more than his mother, because he simply understood more. The reality was that, even knowing about his mother's condition, he hoped she might be confronted and experience the tension and stress she, in his mind, justly deserved. By the end we can see that the son's switching mothers on the bus was a reflection of their reality and opportunity for them both to confront who they are. Julian faced who he really is, a child who was antagonizing his mother. He behaved childishly throughout the story. By the end the reader finds herself asking if she is any different.
The mother placed such emphasis on being self-realized and self-defined. It goes back to a common term that I actually really dislike - the whole "knowing who you are" thing. Some relevant pieces of the text:
pg. 487:
"You remain what you are," she said. "Your great-grandfather had a plantation and two hundred slaves."
pg.489:
"You look like a - thug," she said.
"Then I must be one," he murmured.
...
He thrust his face toward her and hissed, "True culture is in the mind, the mind," he said, and tapped his head, "the mind."
"It's in the heart," she said, "and in how you do things and how you do things is because of who you are."
"Nobody in the damn bus cares who you are."
"I care who I am," she said icily.
There's all this talk of who the mother views herself to be, and it's greatly dependent on her social status, on where she came from. Seeing a black woman, a black mother, on a bus who wears just the same hat may not mean to Julian's mother that this new woman is just as "good" as she is; rather, I think Julian's mother perceives it as meaning that she herself is just as "bad." It's in this way that they are the same. What an upsetting thought this must have been.