Everything That Rises Must Converge is a remarkable and influential piece of writing of Flannery O’Connor. Flannery was a Southern American writer and essayist, who had a prominent role in American literature. This short story of hers mainly talks about an incident happened to Julian, a young man recently graduated from college, and his mother, a middle-aged woman from an eminent family which has now come down in the world. On the bus heading to a reducing class at Y, Julian and his mother met two white women. The one with the protruding teeth gets off the bus when well-dressed black man with a suitcase gets on the bus. Another woman, the one with the red-and-white canvas shoes, moves to the back role of seats to avoid sitting with the black man. Julian’s mother shares the same view of race with her and still keeps the same old ideas before integration. Therefore, when another colored woman gets on with a little boy named Carver, she starts to treat them in a condescending way. She even tries to give the boy a nickel when they get off the bus. Eventually, the colored woman in vexation punches Julian’s mother and knocks her down to the ground.
This story shows the conflicting values between the elderly and young generation in Southern area of America. The mother in this story is a representative of
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Unlike many other writers who would use a sorrowful or lugubrious tone when describing conflicts between two different races, Flannery O’Connor’s words are more unpretentious and plain. She acted as a third party who witnessed the entire event and recorded it without any needless emotions that may disrupt her audience’s own opinion. In this way, readers can have a clear idea of the clash between white people and African American people in the 1960s