It was part of the price she paid for being an insistently Roman Catholic writer in the increasingly secularized United States of the mid-twentieth century. OConnor once famously said, If its a symbol, to hell with it. Perhaps reading life too symbolically also blurs peoples perception of reality. His dreams of the mansion show that even white Southerners who are trying to do right fall victim to the dark allures of a gruesome history. However, the truth is Julians situation is quite similar to his mothers if not worse. Several works of literature employ irony as a major stylistic device. 54955. The world in which he lives is grotesque, and perhaps the way in which he comes to his self-realization is appropriately grotesque. Although "the tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow," he will soon come to know, as did Mr. Head, "that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own." And this kind of epiphany seems to be conceived and produced by the author. Through the publication of books, pamphlets, and magazines (such as Association Monthly, begun in 1907) and a series of well-publicized national conventions and international conferences, the YWCA called for Americas participation in the World Court and the League of Nations; sought the modification of divorce laws, improved Sino-American relations, and world-wide disarmament; advocated sex education as early as 1913; and, through the platform known as the Social Ideals of the Churches, campaigned vigorously for labor unionsa bold move at a time (1920) when anything resembling Bolshevism was anathema. For Further Study Feeling triumphant, he awaits his mothers recognition of the hat, for it seems the chance he has waited to teach her a lesson that would last for awhile. But the real shocker is that he discovers his own likeness to the Negress, the ironic exchange of sons becoming ultimately more terrifying that he anticipated. Julian has the potential to fulfill himself as a person and to be of use to a society in need of reform. In the end, he is morally responsible for his mothers death; but his cries for help at the storys close suggest his desperate awareness of the dark state of his own soul, as Robert D. Denham contends in the The Flannery OConnor Bulletin. If Julians mother resists convergence by placing her faith in social separation and hierarchy, Julian takes an even more extreme position, attempting to cut himself off from identification with other people all together, leaving him arguably even further from grace than his mother. The reality of the present South, in which black people demand her respectto the point of violently rebuking her for her lack of respecttraumatizes Julians Mother so intensely that its as if she can no longer live in the present. Dramatic irony is also used by the author in the final stages of the story where the townsfolk discover Homers remains laid in a bed in Emilys bedroom. ", O'Connor gave answers to those questions in two interviews granted in 1963, two years after this story appeared and one year before her death. The psychiatrists who worked over Dixie found she knew quite well all that was going on and knew it was wrong and wicked. Predictably, much (though not all) of that attention has centered upon the topical materials it uses, the racial problem which seems the focus of the conflict between the storys Southern mother and her liberal son. Julians mother relies on custom and tradition for her moral sensibility, claiming that how you do things is because of who you are and if you know who you are, you can go anywhere. She believes in polite social conduct, and considers herself to be superior to most other peopleespecially African Americans. When her health allowed, she gave readings and lectures and entertained. The final convergence in the story begins when Julian discovers that his mother is more seriously hurt than he had suspected. She is repeatedly described as being childlike: "She might have been a little girl that he had to take to town"; her feet "dangled like a child's and did not quite reach the floor"; and Julian sees her as "a particularly obnoxious child in his charge.". This convergence has embarrassment as its main effecta far cry from the transcendent convergence Teilhard envisions of the end of time. Previous To assume that such attitudes always conceal a hatred for blacks is an error into which many unthinking liberals fall. Struggling with distance learning? It is pushed just too far. " Everything that Rises Must Converge " begins with Julian waiting to escort his mother Mrs. Chestny to her "reducing class" at the YMCA. For in Teilhard there is no place for guilt and sorrow since human existence has had removed from it that taint of original sin which this story certainly assumes as real. INTRODUCTION But the Christian implications of Julians tragedy separate him from Oedipus. Ironically, this leads him to recognize his own weakness rather than revealing hers. Their conflicting viewpoints are designed to highlight a conflict between generations, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, they provide a situation which O'Connor can use to make a comment on what she considers to be the proper basis for all human relationships not just black/white relationships. . However, cultural and political changes have made this kind of convergence inevitable. OConnor is using an identical technique in her presentation of Julians blue-eyed mother, who evidently has extracted selectively for emulation only the most conventional, most romantic aspects of southern womanhood that were popularized by Gone with the Wind. Essay Sample. Finally, it seems, O'Connor has written a story which we can easily read and understand without having to struggle with abstract religious symbolism. Our Teacher Edition on Everything That Rises Must Converge can help. All these delusions of grandeur are ironically placed by the author to show Julians inability to deal with his own inadequacies. 201, No. Concerning the second point, Jefferson although a slaveholder himself found the Souths peculiar institution morally repugnant. In 1989, Amy Tans first book, The Joy Luck Club, sold 275,000 hardcover copies in its first Putnam publication, paving the way for other fir, GRACE PALEY . Julian looks at her face, finally realizing that she is having a stroke. Julian and Carver's mother, on the other hand, are both filled with hostility and anger; for them, there is not, nor can there ever be, any true convergence. . It is thus with the terms Julian uses in his careless abstractions. 526-532. Scarletts resentment towards Ellen OHara may help explain Julians own palpable contempt for his mother. This mentality is likewise reflected in her separate but equal rhetoric: she doesnt care if blacks increase their social standing, so long as she doesnt have to see it. In fact, he looks down on his mother for living according to the laws of her own fantasy world, outside of which she never steps foot, but it is he who spends much of the bus trip deep in fantasy about punishing his mother by bringing home a black friend or a mixed-race girlfriend. He did not ask Dixie to do more than tie the victims hands behind their backs. . That Don is a dangerous criminal, with a compulsion to kill, and that he is uninhibited by any sense of fear or moral conviction is plain. Irony is a common literary device and its use is as old as literature itself. For OConnor, Julians mother would be painfully typical of most mid-century Americans, who neither understand nor appreciate the meaning and purpose of the original Young Womens Christian Association. Everyone else functions in relation to and for the sake of the learning experience that eventually becomes meaningful to him. Edwin OConnor died two years later. OConnors sympathetic concern with the rise of Southern blacks from slavery towards true freedom and socio-economic equality. And if it turned out that ladylike behavior could be damned so readily in 1865, what could be more pathetic than trying to retain it in 1960? Almost two years later, when the posthumous collection appeared, there followed a praiseful review of the collection in which its author was called the most gallant writer, male or female in our contemporary culture, in which review Julians mother is again specifically identified as the storys protagonist., One no longer expects to discover incisive reviews in newspapers, mores the pity, and these notices themselves are of little importance except that they show forth a good bit of the context from which Miss OConnor drew the materials of her fiction. ", As the four people leave the bus, Julian has an "intuition" that his mother will try to give the child a nickel: "The gesture would be as natural to her as breathing." Thus, we realize that "Everything That Rises Must Converge" is not entirely a "simple story.". The generation gap between Julian and his mother manifests itself through their disagreement over race relations, an issue that was a pressing part of public discourse in the early 1960s. The story ends with both Julian and his Mother altered: he has regressed to a, Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. Support your opinion with specific passages from the text. This act provokes such anger in the boys mother that she strikes Julians mother with her handbag. Sources It is not a world in which everything is either black or white. She eventually decides to wear it, commenting that the hat was worth the extra money because others wont have the same one. On the other hand, Faulkner uses dramatic irony to highlight the drastic changes in Emilys life. This we see in the grandmothers development following her encounter with the Misfit, but the same procedure is used in Everything That Rises Must Converge with an important exception. Thus, her view of history unjustly separates racism and exploitation from the regal parts of Southern tradition, demonstrating that she cares more about appearances than realities. So, we know that Julian's mother is a glass-is-half-full type. Julian tries to stop his mother from giving the little boy a penny, but she tries to do it anyway. When the story appeared as first prize winner of the 1963 O. Henry Awards, it was remarked in one of those primary sources of Miss OConnors raw material, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: her basic plot line is provocative and witty: an old-guard Southern lady, afraid to ride the buses without her son since integration, parades out for an evening dressed in a new and expensive hat. ", The title of this story and of O'Connor's second collection of stories is taken from the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a priest-paleontologist. Most simply stated, Teilhard speculated that the evolutionary process was producing a higher and higher level of consciousness and that ultimately that consciousness, now become spiritual, would be complete when it merged with the Divine Consciousness at the Omega point. Another detail of both the Lincoln cent and Jefferson nickel which is relevant to Everything that Rises is the motto E PLURIBUS UNUM (Out of many, one). In discussing grace and its presentation in fiction [in The Church and the Fiction Writer, America, LCVI (March 30, 1957)], she said, Part of the complexity for the Catholic fiction writer will be the presence of grace as it appears in nature, and what matters for him here is that his faith not become detached from his dramatic sense and from his vision of what is. This statement explains her focus on the present; it also reveals the basis of her aesthetic. Print. And there is a mimicry of his mother by Julian in such an indirect statement as this: because the reducing class was one of her few pleasures, necessary for her health, and free, she said Julian could at least put himself out to take her, considering all she did for him. The first paragraph concludes with a statement which is not quite neutral on the authors part, a statement we are to carry with us into the action: Julian did not like to consider all she did for him, but every Wednesday night he braced himself and took her. The but indicates that on Wednesdays the consideration is inescapable, but also that Julian is capable of the minor sacrifice of venturing into the world from his generally safe withdrawal into a kind of mental bubble. With the story so focused that we as readers are aware that we watch Julian watching his mother, the action is ready to proceed, with relatively few intrusions of the author from this point. From the first sentence of the story we have it established that this is Julians story, though with a sufficient freedom in the related point of view to allow the author an occasional intrusion. Such sentiments are undercut through the Jefferson nickel by implicit contrast with the views of one of Americas foremost political and social thinkers. Removing #book# in the text it says "I didn't want to be alone with a blind man. "Irony in Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Rose for Emily." The same situation applies to Emily who is a respected member of the society and cannot find a suitor who is good enough for her. The title story of her posthumous collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge, has been among those stories that have received attention lately. She represents the reactionary element among white Southerners who want to reverse history with respect to race relations. . In fact, for the first half of the twentieth century, blacks and whites used separate facilities: parks, restaurants, clubs, restrooms, and transportation. . He has so carefully set himself off from his mother that, through the pretenses of intellect, he is as far removed from her as Oedipus from Jocasta. As Walter Sullivan asserted in the Hollins Critic. The fact that he morbidly enjoys it suggest that he maybe cares more about winning his argument with his Mother and feeling superior to other Southern whites than he may care about equality. OConnor employs another form of irony at the storys conclusion: the difference between intentions and effects. Finally Julians Mothers fussing with the hat, an essential symbol in this story, demonstrates her investment in appearances. She is described as having "sky-blue" eyes (blue, you may remember, often symbolizes heaven and heavenly love in Christian symbology); Mrs. Chestny's eyes, O'Connor says, were "as innocent and untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten." The relationship between the Griersons and the rest of the community is also highlighted by this irony. These were gifts of affection, not condescension. . When the two pairs of mothers and sons emerge from the bus at the same stop, Julians mother cannot resist the impulse to offer the Negro boy a coindespite Julians protests. These comments reveal her to be an individual who will be slow to change her attitudes (if they can be changed at all) and as an individual who has a nostalgic sense of longing for past traditions. Julian tells his mother that she got what she deserved. The mistake Julian is incapable of seeing is that the Negro woman is more than the colored race; she is the human race, to which he himself belongs through the burden of mans being a spiritual mulatto. Who else would speak of herself as one of the working girls over fifty? "Her teeth had gone unfilled so that his could be straightened," and she even offers to take off her hideous hat when she thinks that it might be the cause of his irritated, "grief-stricken" face. One element which she could count on being familiar to any American reader from any socioeconomic or educational stratum was, however, Margaret Mitchells Gone with the Wind (1936). He runs to her crying, calling her darling, and sweetheart, and Mama, as her face distorts and her eyes close. The incident with Julian and the African American man proves that Julian can connect with neither a fellow professional nor a member of another race. His only reaction to those about him is that of hate, but his expression of that hate is capable only of irritating, except in the case of that one person in his world who loves him, his mother. Julians mother is a beneficiary of slavery having lived an affluent life as a child courtesy of her slave-owning grandfather. Carver's mother is described as "bristling" and filled with "rage" because her son is attracted to Mrs. Chestny. For everything that rises must converge.. This paper was written and submitted to our database by a student to assist your with your own studies. Julians mother reminds him that they come from a good familyone that was once respected for its wealth and social standing. At that time, God would become "all in all." On the bus as he recalls experiences of trying to make friends with Negroes, his responses are genuinely funny. The story concludes with Julian running for help. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, she asserts. Interviews with OConnor over the course of her career. 1. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man, New York: HarperCollins, 1980. At the turn of the century the YWCA, under the leadership of its industrial secretary Florence Simms, was actively involved in exposing the poor working conditions of women and children and campaigning for legislation to improve those conditions. 3, Spring 1987, pp. That opposition is caused in the case of Julians mother by a personal. Likewise, Julians mother regresses to her secure childhood and calls for her mammy Caroline, a request which indicates that, for all its defects, the older generation had more genuine personal feeling for Negroes than [Julians] with its heartless liberalism [according to John R. May in his book The Pruning Word: The Parables of Flannery OConnor]. Referring to the Christian concept of revelation, Teilhard posits that at the end of time human spirit will have at last risen to the ultimate point of convergence, where all people are as one in Christ. Julian is a college graduate who has a fair understating of the world he lives in and because of this finds difficulty dealing Premium White people Black people Race 1463 Words More specifically, OConnor evidently saw the progress of race relations in the South since the Civil War as part of the convergence of all humanity towards Omega point. But our author gives a careful control of our reading, particularly in the imagery Julian chooses to describe his mother. The old manners and your graciousness is not worth a damn. She is breathing hard but Julian doesnt recognize that she is in physical distress. His fantasies of finding influential black friends and lovers are testaments to just how unrealistic his views are. 1529. 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