Everything that rises must converge

O’Connor’s story “everything that rises must converge” demonstrates the generation gap between racism and openness on the surface, but a closer read reveals the theme of understanding any person’s views.

Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of short stories written by Flannery O’Connor during her final illness. The title of the collection and of the short story is taken from a passage from the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.[ The collection was published posthumously in 1965. It includes an introduction by Robert Fitzgerald, and nine stories:

Flannery O’Connor’s short stories are studied in classrooms across the world. “Everything that Rises Must Converge” was first published in 1961 and makes a statement about the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation happening across America.

The story illustrates the generation gap between Julian, who represents the Civil Rights Movement and tolerance, and his mother, who represents racism and close-mindedness, but the story doesn’t just harp on right and wrong with race, but openness and tolerance for the previous generation’s ideas.

Just one year before her death in 1963, Flannery O’Connor won her second O. Henry Award for ‘‘Everything That Rises Must Converge,’’ a powerful depiction of a troubled mother-son relationship. In 1965 the story was published in her well-regarded short fiction collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge.

Mary Flannery O’Connor (March 25 1925 – August 3 1964) was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist.
An important voice in American literature, O’Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and — it is regularly said — grotesque characters. O’Connor’s writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith, and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics.

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