OConnors Everything That Rises Must Converge :: Everything That Rises Must Converge

OConnors Everything That Rises Must ConvergeEverything That Rises Must Converge, in a sense sums up OConnors boilersuit philosophy or theology that is, that everything which rises above the petty concerns of earth, above materialism, must converge somewhere in an ideal realm, that is, Heaven. The story concerns Julian and his beget and a series of misunderstandings between them. We find that Julians mother is overweight, rude to other people, particularly to Black people, and very judgmental. Julian in turn spends a lot of his duration judging his mother. The story focuses on a private instructor trip that Julian and his mother are taking to the Ys reducing class, and what happens in the course of that trip. During the bus trip, Julians mother openly sympathises with some other white women who dont like Negroes on the bus. When a Black man gets on the bus, Julian attempts to be friendly with him and in so doing sees himself as morally superior to his mother. We see here that Julia n is being very judgmental. For instance, we find Julian entertaining these thoughts after the man has got off the bus He imagined his mother lying desperately ill and his being able to secure only a Negro doctor for her. He toyed with that idea for a few minutes and then dropped it for a momentary vision of himself participating as a sympathiser in a sit-in demonstration. This was possible provided he did not linger with it. Instead, he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare yourself, he said. There is zipper you can do about it. This is the woman I have chosen. (15)It is just shortly after this fantasy that a very large Black woman and her little boy get on and Julian is somewhat delighted because the Negro woman is actually wearing the same hat as his mother, a hat that he has made fun of earlier in the story. Julian reacts as follows His eyes widened.The vision of the two hats, identical, broke upon him with the radianc e of a pictorial sunrise. His face was suddenly lit with joy. He could not believe that Fate had thrust upon his mother such a lesson. He gave a loud laugh softly so she would look at him and see that he saw. She turned her eyes on him slowly. The blue in them seemed to have turned a bruised purple.