Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything that Rises Must Converge” is a manifestation of racism combined with several emotional indications of faith, grotesque, horror, and subdued tension between generations. However, the visible aspect of the story is racism and it covers the central theme of the text. This is at par with the civil rights movements of the day that dealt with people from the alternate phase of social principles. The socio-economic context is the most important scenario to understand the narrative of the story. It should be noted that anti-racist activities and awareness were instrumental during this period in the social strata of the US and with the deaths of several African-American activists, the civil rights movement was at its peak. A third-person narrator tells O’Connor’s story, but the focus is on the mother-son perspective of events.
The son, Julian, is more open-minded than his mother. The mother loves to live in the old days when Julian’s “great-grandfather was a former governor of this state” and this “grandfather was a prosperous land-owner“. Julian is constantly reminded by his mother that his “great-grand-father had a plantation and two hundred slaves“. (O’Connor, 401) Julian has no such prejudice and tries to control his mother’s hateful attitudes. However, his mother thinks otherwise. She is the face of racism in the story. The fundamentality of this story is a measure of human essence where the major character appears to be nature and the atmosphere. The social norms and distinctions are also a part of it.
Flannery O’Connor’s text is a narration where no one in this story is particularly appealing or sympathetic. The old woman and her son are the central characters in this narration and they are opposing each other without winning over each other. The story also ends with a certain message. It appears that at a certain point it becomes the aspect of evil meeting evil. The racist feeling is evil and this evil of white-hating black is the same as the incident where black shows hate towards white. This is the fundamentalism of color and whichever way it moves; it is always evil. The mother meets a black woman with the same hateful nature towards whites that she possesses against blacks. The fact that Julian failed to save her mother at the end indicates that evil only generates evil and this approach makes the story very rude and the narration becomes a merciless text.
Julian appears to be a figure of humane beliefs that the author presented as pacification between the two conflicting colors. Additionally, as Julian is depicted as a much younger character and the representative of the new generation the author certainly feels that the aspect of racism was near its end as the newer generation, Julian’s generation, would be more open-minded and true to a better social structure. It is as if indicated by the death of the mother that the old order of racial hate is coming to an end and the new world order was in progress with Julian’s generation. However, it should be remembered that message of the text is an amalgamation of conflict between the evil nature of humans and the good essence of life. The same is applicable in the context of themes. All of the themes are juxtaposed to convey an alternate truth of the marginalized parameter.
Work Cited
O’Connor, Flannery; “Everything That Rises Must Converge”; The Norton Instruction to Literature-Shorter Ninth Edition by Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, Kelly J. Mays; 1965; pg. 400-410.