Everything That Rises Must Converge (1961). Content and Description

Set during the beginning of the Civil Rights movement when the South was still segregated, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” first appeared in the October 1961 issue of New World Writing. The story won the first-place prize in the 1962 O. Henry Memorial Award competition. Significantly, O’Connor’s story includes what is commonly referred to as an O. Henry twist, a literary term derived from O. Henry’s stories, which usually include an unexpected conclusion or climax.

These surprise endings often cause the audience to review the story from a different perspective by revealing new information about the characters or plot. Upon a second reading, the reader can detect the many clues and foreshadowing devices that lead to the story’s unexpected climax. On a first reading, however, as with many works of literature, the story’s many ironies may not be noticed. Of course, as with most literature, the reader should view the first reading as a primary investigation that will require further readings and analysis to plumb the story’s depth.

The plot of “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is easily summarized: A mother who does not wish to ride the bus alone insists that her son, Julian, accompany her to a weight-reducing class at the downtown YWCA. The story begins on the bus; focuses on significant exchanges among Julian, his mother, and the other bus riders, including an African-American woman traveling with her young son; and concludes with the bus’s arrival and the death of Julian’s mother on a downtown sidewalk.

O’Connor’s story is told from a limited third- person narrative point of view, in which the narrator focuses on the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of a single character, in this case, Julian. Because the reader encounters events through Julian’s eyes, the reader may resist judging Julian, or at least withhold judgment until the end of the story, when Julian’s many contradictions come to light. Were one to read “Everything That Rises” considering the narrator’s ironic position—the subtle way the story’s tone and words convey Julian’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions—then the story becomes a comic exploration of human flaws. While tragedy takes as its subject human suffering, comedy tends to showcase human foibles.

Thus, even though the reader may ultimately experience Julian and his mother’s blindness—their self-possession, resistance to change, and disdain for those with whom they interact—the narrator presents their flaws from a comic perspective, one that acknowledges human weakness. In that sense, the story contains dramatic irony, in which the reader ultimately understands the characters’ faults, and a cosmic vision of convergence, one O’Connor derives from the writings of the French Roman Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

The story’s title is taken from Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man, a mystical work in which he argues that, despite frailty, blindness, weakness, and a tendency to see their selves and not others, human beings are being drawn to a point of convergence, an “Omega Point,” a form of human evolution resulting in selfawareness and ultimately a form of supreme consciousness (for more information on this idea, see question number 2). Such an understanding of the story does not present itself after one isolated read. Rather, it is important to read “Everything That Rises Must Converge” in light of the other stories in the collection of the same name, which was published after O’Connor’s death, and consider O’Connor’s comments on the collection’s title, its source (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), and the reviews O’Connor wrote about Teilhard de Chardin’s works.

In her review of The Phenomenon of Man in the fall 1961 issue of the American Scholar, O’Connor writes that Teilhard de Chardin offers “a scientific expression of what the poet attempts to do: penetrate matter until spirit is revealed in it” (“Outstanding Books, 1931-1961,” American Scholar 618). Part of the way that O’Connor “penetrates matter” lies in her use of irony. The title of the story, for example, although drawn from Teilhard de Chardin, also alludes to the “rising” of the mother’s blood pressure, which ultimately leads to her death.

Although Julian presents himself as an independent intellectual, a close examination of the story’s language and descriptions reveals that he is actually dependent on his mother’s continued financial and emotional support. She has made significant sacrifices to pay for Julian’s education, so many that the purchase of a $7.50 hat causes her to worry. Julian tries to convince his mother that the purchase is justified, not considering the economic pressure she feels, which Julian exacerbates by continuing to rely on her.

Julian views the trip to the Y as a personal sacrifice and sees himself as a martyr, yet the narrator also reveals Julian’s self-doubts and his acknowledgment of his mother’s sacrifices. At the beginning of the story, the parent-child relationship seems to be reversed. By the end of the story, however, it is clear that Julian, though an adult with a college education, is still very much a child, one dependent on his mother’s money, care, and guidance. Despite having earned a college degree, Julian remains set apart, incapable of acting or supporting himself, lost in his interior world.

Although he states, “True culture is in the mind,” Julian is an idealist out of touch with reality, a man of modest intellectual means trapped in a limited worldview. Furthermore, although Julian purports to have progressive views on race relations and social issues, claiming that his mother lives “according to the laws of her own fantasy world, outside of which she never sets foot,” Julian fantasizes about hurting his mother by taking home a black friend or biracial girlfriend. He also dreams about conversing with educated African Americans with whom he can share his world of ideas. As further irony, for all his so-called liberal views on race relations, Julian longs for the aristocratic past he has been denied, one afforded by the exploitation of African Americans. His dreams, however, never actualize; he remains a man of conflicted thoughts incapable of performing noble deeds.

If one considers the literary term theme in its broadest sense—any significant, recurring, or developed concept or argument in a work of literature—then several interrelated themes emerge in the story: the fallen nature of the modern world; the struggle for social class and status; morals, morality, and moral responsibility; racism in the South; the impact of integration in the South; intellectualism and elitism; knowledge and ignorance; self-deception versus self-understanding; the manipulation of others; thinking versus acting; the ideal verses the real; appearance versus reality. These are a few of the many possible subjects to explore in writing about and discussing the story.

As with O’Connor’s very best works, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” contains grotesque characters who wrestle with meaning, sacredness, and understanding. This particular story also highlights the longing for love that is a part of universal humanity. In writing about the struggle between races, a region divided between the old and new, and a mother and son who even in their seeming differences care for each other, O’Connor presents seekers in the modern world, those confronting the bitter taste of enmity and the reality of change in spite of their blindness, their pride-filled distortion of what it means to be alive.

As James Joyce’s “Araby” does, O’Connor’s tale ends in a “tide of darkness,” the “world of guilt and sorrow” that both Julian and the reader encounter. To perceive this world is to perceive contradiction—the intersection of past and present, secular and sacred, self and other, hate and love, the convergence of paradoxes that form the American experience.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. One of the issues teachers and students alike wrestle with is characterization—the way in which an author’s characters represent things in the real world. With this in mind, assess the African-American characters in the story. What ideas, characteristics, or qualities do they embody? How do these characters compare or contrast with O’Connor’s white characters? To explore this subject further, read other O’Connor stories that contain, describe, or quote black characters, such as “Greenleaf,” “Revelation,” and “The Enduring Chill.” With O’Connor’s descriptions in mind, evaluate her representation of African Americans. Explain your assessment with details from the stories. Test your hypothesis by asking the typical questions used to evaluate literary characters: Are the characters full and round, or are they simple and flat? Do the characters change? If so, how? If not, why is that important?

2. O’Connor derives the story’s title from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Roman Catholic priest, mystic, and paleontologist, whose works O’Connor read and reviewed in 1960 and 1961. For Teilhard de Chardin, no human being is fixed. Instead, all human beings evolve toward a point of transcendence—universal love—a point where the outside world and the inside world converge in Christ. Yet O’Connor’s protagonists in “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and in the posthumously published short story collection of the same name do not reach the “Omega Point.” Why is this significant? Why would O’Connor use such a positive, life-affirming title for a collection of stories that has so many failed characters? In addition to the title story, read other stories from the collection, perhaps “Greenleaf,” “A View from the Woods,” “The Lame Shall Enter First,” “Revelation,” and “Judgment Day.” Think about the protagonists’ struggles and moments of awareness. With those in mind, evaluate how O’Connor incorporates Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of humanity.

3. “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is set at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. Choose a reliable information source such as an online or print encyclopedia and learn more about the movement. Then, discuss how knowing about civil rights helps readers understand the story’s conflict.