Everything That Rises Must Converge, Creative Essay Example

The conflict of the story is two-fold. There exists a conflict between Julian and his mother and between pre-integration Southern life and post-integration Southern life. This conflict builds as Julian and his mother take a bus ride. Julian finds his mother intolerant of African-Americans and wishes to find some way to ally himself with a black person to humiliate his mother. He wants to bring a black woman home, but he does not want his mother to have a stroke. As a black woman and her son board the bus, the action escalates. After offering the boy a penny, Julian’s mother is hit in the head by the black woman. The falling action is the stroke that Julian’s mother suffers after exiting the bus.

The story’s title originates in a line exchanged by Julian and his mother. Julian’s mother believes that black people should have the chance to rise in society, but they should rise separately from whites. But, everything that rises must converge. That is, as blacks rise in society, full integration must occur.

Julian is the less tolerant person in the story. Julian’s mother is not tolerant of black people, but Julian is not tolerant of many different types of people. He is not tolerant of his racist mother. By his own admission, he is also unable to make connections with black people. He even revels in a symbol of the racist South, wishing to live on his grandfather’s plantation.

O’Connor’s writing tries to shock the reader. She uses violence and the grotesque (the unreasonable) to reveal human nature and teach lessons (the reasonable).

I admire that Julian’s mother has a firm set of beliefs. However, I do not agree with these beliefs. Despite all her flaws, she knows herself better than Julian knows himself. I felt happy that she had a stroke, but I wished that something had also befallen Julian.

The final line represents how Julian and the South are eternally swept back into guilt and sorrow. Julian, representative of the modern South, will be guilty and feel sorrow over the treatment of slaves and segregation. The old will go away and all that is left is guilt and sorrow.