One of the key themes of this story, set in the American South, is the prejudice caused by racism and classism and how this can lead to hypocrisy and misjudgment of people. The protagonist of the story, Ruby Turpin, believes herself to be a good, God-fearing woman. She goes to church, owns a house and land, and prides herself on her philosophy of trying to be kind to everyone she meets. What she does not realize, however, is how hypocritical her behavior really is. When she lies awake at night in bed, in order to sleep, she thinks about how she might rank different people in terms of their righteousness—with "white trash" and "n*****s" at the bottom of the heap, separate but equally vile, and others ranked above them depending on their level of wealth. Mrs. Turpin thanks God every day for having made her who she is and not "white trash," a category of people she judges to be even worse than "respectable" Black people. She honestly believes that this is a valid and Christian way to view the world around her. She repeatedly discredits everyone around her, particularly though of Black, lower-income backgrounds. Even when she is fishing for compliments from the Black workers, she does not believe their praise on the grounds of racist judgment.  

In Mrs. Turpin's mind, people's appearances are everything. The girl in the waiting room at the doctor's office, whom she judges to be "ugly," Mrs. Turpin pities but also dislikes, purely based on her appearance. She does not care that the girl is attending Wellesley and is obviously intelligent and thoughtful. She is particularly outraged when the girl can no longer take what Mrs. Turpin is saying and lashes out in anger, throwing a book at Mrs. Turpin and calling her "a hog from hell." By her own standards, Mrs. Turpin herself is lacking in appearance. She even jokes about her weight—something she points out harshly in the people around her—claiming that she can “just look at something good to eat and…gain some weight.” This may be read in a couple of ways. On the one hand, Mrs. Turpin may be deflecting something she is truly insecure about. In another vein, she is behaving hypocritically. She judges the teenage girl for her weight and privately calls her ugly. She fails to see her own unfair judgments or the reality of people beyond their physical appearance.

A central theme of the story—prevalent in the second half—is revelation, or second chances. Although Mrs. Turpin has spent her whole life believing one thing, this doesn't mean that it isn't possible for her to have her eyes opened and her mind changed. At first, Mrs. Turpin is outraged at having been challenged in this way by the teenage girl; she is also inexplicably offended by the behavior of her own black servants, who "flatter" her and assert their outrage. But, having thought about what has happened, Mrs. Turpin comes to realize that "white trash" who do not think themselves better than others might ascend to heaven and be "clean," whereas those like her will have their "virtues" burned away as punishment for having thought themselves better than others. So, while Mrs. Turpin has spent a lifetime understanding Christianity in a hypocritical way, it has only taken one incident to make her reevaluate her philosophy of life. Bigotry need not be forever.