Everything that rises must con
Everything that rises must conThere is an absolute theme of integration in “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’ Connor.
Through the experience of reading this short story, we can depict the characters’ past experiences.
There are two incompatible personalities in the passage, Mrs. Chestney, the mother, which represents the transition from the old South, and Julian, the son, who represents the transition of the new South.
Due to the fact that Mrs. Chestney was the granddaughter of a governor, it purely conveys that she ranked high in wealth and position. This purely expresses her growing experience in a southern manner and to behave in a gentile southern manner.
In relation to integration, Mrs. Chestney dismisses the plight of blacks with a southern response, “They should rise, yes, but on their own side of their fence”.
This attitude most likely resulted from being taught to talk this way all her life. Although she makes thoughtless remarks, her genuine affection for her childhood nurse Caroline, shows that she has no real malice towards the black race.
There is a repetition of the words “meet yourself coming and going”, in which she implicates her kind, as the party responsible for the tension between black and whites. In fact, what she really means is that, “we dominated this race of people”, and feels threatened by it. Also, Mrs. Chestney truly meets her match when the black woman who boards the bus with her son refuses her charity. Julian becomes overjoyed when he notices that the woman’s hat is identical to his mother’s. Thus, Mrs. Chestney fears materialize- she truly “meets herself coming and going”.
Mrs. Chestney doesn’t open...
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