"Everything That Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor

1.9.22

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“Everything That Rises Must Converge”

Flannery O’Connor was a prolific short story writer from Georgia who also wrote novels. To be honest, I don’t know a lot about O’Connor. Like Carver, she attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, maybe the most famous (and one of the first) MFA programs in the United States. Many of her stories are morally driven, like parables, but less didactic. O’Connor unflinchingly wrote about racism and bigotry. She herself was disabled (she lived with and died because of lupus, an autoimmune disorder). There has been a recent debate about whether O’Connor was racist herself. This piece was published in The New Yorker and this piece was published in Commonwealth Magazine as a rebuttal. In my own naive interpretation, I think O’Connor must have, of course, reckoned with racism herself, as most people raised in the United States (and basically everywhere else) do. Clearly she had a lot of awareness about racism in the south, more than many white people.

“Everything That Rises Must Converge” was written later in her life. Its title refers to Omega Point, a work by the philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. “Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love. At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.” It won O’Connor an O. Henry Award.

The POV is third person close, adhering only to Julian’s observations and thoughts. Julian is a recent college graduate living with his elderly mother, and he’s taking her to the local YMCA so she can get some exercise. Julian seems to resent everything about his mother and her history: his slave-owning grandparents, the beautiful plantation and house that, in his mind, should be his, and the garish hat his mother has bought for herself. As she tries on the hat in the mirror before leaving the house, he reassures her that it looks fine and rebuffs her lamentations regarding its price (she wants to return it because it was so expensive). Because of the POV, the reader can clearly see his criticism and apparent hatred for her— he judges her harshly. He has “braced himself” to take her to the Y, as he does every week, and wants to get the whole ordeal over with, despite her paying for his room and board and all the kind things she says to him.

Once they leave the house they get on the bus, and Julian is disappointed there are no Black people on the bus, because he wants to teach his mother a lesson about her racism. When a Black man gets on the bus, Julian fails to see him as just another person and instead sees him as a tool to teach his mother about her racism, which is, of course, its own kind of racism. He’s disappointed when the man doesn’t engage in the way he wants.

In this story O’Connor engages with the insidious ways that racism persists— it’s not just his mother lamenting integration, which Julian hates to see. Julian considers himself good, above his mothers racism, and yet he proves himself racist as well. As a white person living in the south in the 1960’s, it would have been challenging to have enough self-awareness to see one’s own racism (scratch that; it’s still hard for white people everywhere). Instead, it’s easier to look at others, whose racism is more pronounced, and condemn them. The human bind of blaming others instead of honestly examining the self in the main driver of this story. Like all of O’Connor’s stories (the one’s I’ve read), there is less of a moral quandary and more of a judgement.

Julian does express tenderness towards his mother. It’s clear that he feels guilt for his hatred and resentment towards her. But we don’t really see his love for her until the end of the story, when his mother has had a stroke.

I’m super interested in what everyone thought of this story! Tell me in the comments. And don’t forget to scroll up and become a paying subscriber!

Tomorrow’s first story is “Zimmer Land” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Full disclosure, Nana was two years above me at my MFA program. I remember him reading this story at his graduation. It’s a good one.

I’ll also be reading “Bullet In The Brain” by Tobias Wolff, a shorter and very good story, to catch up.