Interpretation Of Everything That Rises, Must Converge

"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara is a short story set in the inner part of New York City that gives the reader an opportunity to briefly see into the lives of children living devoid of wealth and education. It takes place in the early seventies, following the civil rights movement and during a time when the imbalance of wealth in terms of race was immense. Bamabara, through the use of narrative point of tone, symbols, setting and characterization, brings out and develops what I believe to be the two main themes of the story: materialism and social inequality.

Flannery O' Connor's short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is about racial judgment in the south in the 1960's. O' Conors main focus in this story is how the white middle class viewed and treated people from different races in the 1960's. The story is an example of irony, redemption as well as a struggle of identity among the characters. The main characters in O'Connor's story are Julian an aspiring writer, who works as a typewriter salesmen, and his mother who is a low-middle class racist white woman who has strong views about thvxe African-American race. Both Julian and his mother are great depictions of the white mindsets of racial integration in the

Over the past 75 years, the American people, while reading either short stories, novels, or longer publications, have been indoctrinated with the idea of modernism. This idea, has been pushed forwards be authors in all ages, and in all forms of publication. Modernism can be described, as looking at society and culture through a lens to find criticisms and critiques of the way that we perceive it. One of the best example of modernism that has been published in the past 75 years was by Flannery O’Conner, during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Flannery O’Connor throughout her short story, uses character’s and phrases to demonstrate the presence of evil in society as well as in each and every one of us.

In Everything that Rises Must Converge, Julian and his mother experience a moment of clarity in terms of contemplating on their actions and thoughts. Julian has always hated his mother for her traditional southern beliefs and ways. She even goes as far as to wish that she lived back in the past when she was a girl. She embodies the traditional pre-civil rights southerner who believes in being superior to someone else in terms of race, money, or any other factor. When she sees a black woman on the bus wearing the same hat she is wearing, she realizes that someone regarded as inferior by her standards, a black woman, is suddenly equal to her. She shows great discomfort and disapproval of this new ideal. When the black woman and her son are getting off of the bus, she approaches them and gives the child a penny as a sign of humiliation and inferiority. The black woman then hits her which causes her to fall to the ground. Julian’s mother falling to the ground shows a change in actions and thoughts for both her and Julian (Moore). Julian begins to tell her that she got what she deserved for giving her insulting pennies to black

Elijah’s daughter, Luvenia, struggles to get a job and into college in Chicago while her brother Richard travels back to South Carolina. Abby’s grandson, Tommy works with civil rights and protests, and tries to get into college for basketball. The story ends with Malcolm, Richard’s grandson, getting his his cousin Shep, who is struggling with drugs, to the family reunion. In reading this story one could wonder how the transition from slavery to segregation in the United States really occurred. The timeline can be split into three distinct sections, Emancipation, forming segregation, and life post-Civil War, pre-civil rights.

The concept of judging other individuals based on their looks and class status is a reflection seen within Flannery O’Connor’s short story called “Revelation.” In this story O’Connor illustrates a women who is extremely arrogant, and believes that she is superior to others because of her white skin and wealth. This

"Everything That Rises Must Converge" also uses its setting to explore place and heritage to give us better insight into the actions and feelings of the characters. Julian, living in a poor neighborhood with his mother, shortly after the integration of blacks to public transportation, struggles to get his mother to understand that the world has changed. No longer are there huge plantations with hundreds of slaves, in fact "there are no more slaves." Once fashionable neighborhoods, like the one in

In his final lecture to his mother, Julian says: “You needn’t act as if the world had come to an end…because it hasn’t. From now on you’ve got to live in a new world and face a few realities for a change.” This statement is ironic because it applies to Julian more than to his mother.

“Everything That Rises must converge”, by Flannery O’ Connor is sometimes considered a comical but also serious tale of a grown man named Julian, who lives with mother, who happens to be your typical southern woman. The era unfolds in a couple years after integration begins. Throughout the story, O’Connor impresses us with her derived message in which people often resist to growing away from bigotry towards self-awareness and love for all humankind, which is so necessary for life to converge in equality. O’Connor has a distinctive style of writing that expresses this message through characterization, conflict and literary devices.

“The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara is not just about a sassy, defiant, ungrateful poor girl that is out of place in an overpriced expensive toy store. “The Lesson” is a short story about a young black girl who is struggling with her increasing awareness of class inequality. When Sylvia’s new neighbor, Miss. Moore, a smart college educated woman introduces the reality of social inequality to Sylvia and her group of friends, they become cynical. Sylvia has always known in the back of her mind that she was poor, but never really let it bother her until she sees her disadvantages in glaring contrast with the luxuries of the wealthy.

However, Julian, like many O 'Connor characters, experiences a sudden realization that stems from his flaws. Toward the end of the story, his mother attempts to give a coin to the child of a belligerent black women, who, not coincidentally, has the exact same absurd hat that his mother was wearing at the beginning of the story. He finds this hilarious, thinking, “The vision of the two hats, identical, broke upon him with the radiance of a brilliant sunrise. His face was suddenly lit with joy. He could not believe that Fate had thrust upon his mother such a lesson,” (11). David Leigh, who wrote an essay concerning O’Connor’s short fiction, comments on this particular relationship. He explains, “Only after he experiences the suffering of his mother, who has a stroke at the end of her conflict with a

Readers can find that “ Everything That Rises Must Converge” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” are Southern American literature. “Everything That Rises Must Converge” was written in the midst of the movement of American Civil rights. In the story, the settings such as ” bulbous liver-colored monstrosities of a uniform ugliness” and the “dying violet sky” make people feel moody and uncomfortable. The main character Julian’s mother has an unchangeable opinion of racism and refuses to accept the racial integration

In Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, Julian Chestny, a young white man struggles to accept the ignorant beliefs and actions of his elderly mother in a post-civil rights era. The point of view plays an important role in this story and how readers interpret it. A point of view is the vantage point of which the story 's told. O’Connor uses point of view to help illustrate the central idea of the story.

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, O’Connor uses the symbolism of the violet hat and the shiny new penny along with all of the things Julian’s mother has done for him throughout his life, to place the broader societal conflict of race relations within the context of the unstable relationship Julian has with his mother, showing how poor southern whites used blacks to elevate themselves. Julian’s clashes with his mother over morals, race, and appearances mimic the greater conflict of racial relations in society.

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge” emphasizes the hostility and racial discrimination that white southerners exhibited towards African Americans as a result of integration during the 1960’s. This short story focuses not only on the white American’s living in poverty, but also accentuates the ways in which two people born in different generations react to racial integration. Having descended from a formerly wealthy slave owning family, Julian’s mother, who remains unnamed, struggles to support both herself and her son after slavery is abolished. The family’s poverty becomes evident after the mother regrets purchasing a hat, claiming that if she returned it she could pay the gas bills instead (O’Connor, par. 10). As a struggling writer and typewriter salesman, presumably in his early 20’s, Julian claims to have “lost his faith” in a struggle to reason with his racist mother (O’Connor, par. 10). Describing himself to be “saturated in depression”, it becomes unmistakable that Julian feels resentful towards his mother for his upbringing and current position in life (O’Connor, par. 10). His mother, who takes pride in the way she raised him, reasons, “…if you know who you are, you can go anywhere”, prompting a quick disagreement from her son, where he argues, “[that’s] good for one generation only” (O’Connor, par. 16). Through observing