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Motherly Love Essay

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Motherly Love
In the three stories we read by Flannery O’Connor; “The Comforts of Home”, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, and “The Enduring Chill”, the major relationship portrayed was between mothers and their hypersensitive sons. While all of the major characters, the sons, were noticeably similar, the lesser characters of the mothers were also very alike in many ways. Many of their views, gestures and outward qualities paralleled throughout the stories. After rereading all of the stories again I came to the realization that the mothers O’Connor wrote in her stories were variations of the same person.
One of the qualities that jump out first is that all three mothers are …show more content…

The boys feel that either their mother did not do a good enough job raising them or that she has disrupted the proper pace of their lives. This is apparent in all the boys but especially confusing in the case of Julian. At the beginning of the story he says “he could have stood his lot better if she [his mother] had been an old hag who drank and screamed at him” (5) yet later talks about how “there was no reason for her to think she could always depend on him” (14). While he feels that she raised him well, he does not want her to feel that he will be there for her like she seems to have been there for him. Asbury makes it very clear that he feels his mother was the unnerving force that lead to the demise of his life. Upon his death, he wanted his mother to read a letter her wrote to her about “what she had done to him” (91) but thought, “that his mother would not understand the letter at once… he thought she would be able to see that he forgave her for all that she had done to him” (91). This statement, like Julian’s is not truly supported in any way. It appears in both stories that the boys mothers did everything they possible could to give their children the best of life. Thomas, on the other hand, does not feel quite as much observable loathing to his mother and says that he “loved his mother. He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him” (118). Unlike the other

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