Everything That Rises Must Converge Summary

Flannery O’Connor’s, “Everything that Rises Must Converge” is a short story illustrating the time of 1960’s in the south and racism. At the heart of the story is a middle-aged woman from an old southern family better known as Julian’s mother. Julian is her son, a resentful college grad who makes it his agenda to teacher his mother a lesson. The mother is stuck in a time of her ancestors when segregation was taught rather than a choice. Julian on the other hand chose not to follow his mother's’ beliefs and show his mother that there is no difference in people, except the color of your skin. In Howard McGary’s article, “Liberalism and the Problem of Racism” he discusses the liberal response to segregation and slavery. He also discusses that people are entitled to shape their own lives while others believed it depends upon the hindering of outside influences such as environments or parents and family …show more content…
Towards the end of the story, a woman of color walks onto the bus with the same exact purple hat.” He visualized the woman as she had stood waiting for her tokens-the ponderous figure, rising from the red shoes upward over the solid hips, the mammoth bosom, the haughty face, to the green and purple hat.”(p.6-7) Putting both of the women on an equal social status. Historically, and by Julian’s’ mother’s conservative standards, racial differences would have automatically placed Julian’s mother on a higher social plane than the black woman, regardless of similarities or differences in wealth, education, and appearance. But, as we learn in the end of the story when the black woman walks on the bus in the same hat, “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.” (p.8) , that we in fact are