Everything That Rises Must Converge

As a child, Jeannette’s sense of wonder and curiosity in the world undermine the need for money. During her young adult years, a new wave of insecurity associated with her poor past infects her. Finally, as an experienced and aged woman, Jeannette finds joy and nostalgia in cherishing her poverty- stricken past. It must be noted that no story goes without a couple twists and turns, especiallydefinitely not Jeannette Walls’. The fact of the matter is that growing up in poverty effectively craftsed, and transformsed her into the person she becomeshas become. While statistics and research show that living in poverty can be detrimental to a child’s self-esteem, Jeannette Walls encourages children living in poverty to have ownership over their temporary situation, and never to feel inferior because of past or present socio-economic

duplicate of his mother's hat. His mother shocks and her face shows a sudden rise in blood pressure. She recovers soon and starts to make up to the little boy, a kind of pity for him and plays with him. The boy's mother doesn’t feel good and pulls her son away. The Julian's mother continues to search for a nickel to give the little boy. All she finds is a penny and even though Julian warns her not to do it, she offers it to the little boy. The boy's mother upsets and hits badly Julian's mother with her packing books, and says ''He doesn't take nobody's money''.

“Everything That Rises must converge”, by Flannery O’ Connor is sometimes considered a comical but also serious tale of a grown man named Julian, who lives with mother, who happens to be your typical southern woman. The era unfolds in a couple years after integration begins. Throughout the story, O’Connor impresses us with her derived message in which people often resist to growing away from bigotry towards self-awareness and love for all humankind, which is so necessary for life to converge in equality. O’Connor has a distinctive style of writing that expresses this message through characterization, conflict and literary devices.

Though individuals have different opinions on certain matters, all individuals have some sense of right and wrong. It is wrong to cheat on a test, it is wrong to drive without a license, and it is wrong to steal, but for some obscure reason the majority of individuals have done so. Chester Himes was the director of Special Publications for the Phelps-Stokes Fund in New York City and wrote Mama's Missionary Money. In Himes’s passage he tells of a boy named Lemual who purloins money from his mother. Lemual finds money in his mother’s dresser, and he takes coins every day until his mother realizes her money is missing. Lemual has become idolized by the neighborhood kids as he takes them out to eat and watch shows. Through the author’s use of simile, hyperbole, and anaphora the reader gets a thorough understanding that all actions have certain consequences and individuals must be prepared to face them.

In Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, Julian Chestny, a young white man struggles to accept the ignorant beliefs and actions of his elderly mother in a post-civil rights era. The point of view plays an important role in this story and how readers interpret it. A point of view is the vantage point of which the story 's told. O’Connor uses point of view to help illustrate the central idea of the story.

“The mother removes her purse from her shoulder and rummages through its contents: lipstick, a lace handkerchief, an address book. She finds what she’s looking for and passes a folded dollar over her child’s head to the man who stands and stares even though the light has changed and traffic navigates around his hips… He does not know his part. He does not know that acceptance of the gift and gratitude are what makes this transaction complete… The mother grows impatient and pushes the stroller before her, bearing the dollar like a cross. Finally, a black hand rises and closes around green” (paragraphs 3-5).

Once inside the store, Sylvia can no longer ignore the blinding imparity between the rich and the poor. Her discovery of an overly priced toy clown prompts her to consider what could be bought for its price: "Thirty-five dollars could buy new bunk beds for Junior and Gretchen’s boy. Thirty-five dollars and the whole household could go visit Granddaddy Nelson in the country. Thirty-five dollars would pay for the rent and the piano bill too" (605). Sylvia is forced to finally address the socioeconomic inequality that works against her while simultaneously conferring certain luxuries on the rich: "Who are these people that spend that much for performing clowns and $1000 for toy sailboats? What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it?" (605).

We all walkin on tiptoe and hardly touchin the games and puzzles and things” (646). The toy store in the White neighborhood was not like the one she and the other children were use to in her Harlem community where thing were cheap and quickly replaced. To her this Toy store was something too pure to be touched and most precious because it belonged to those of wealth and it was not for her people of poor quality to demolish.

There are many things that can be denied or ignored in this life, family relationships are not one of them. In my opinion, it is the strongest connection between a mother and her son or daughter, so it is intelligently presented by Amy Tan's author "Two Kinds," as well as "Everything that Rises must converge" by Flannery, both authors use this type of relationship, so we can get their stories in a way that identifies us, maybe not with a character. But instead with a situation that they abate, and that is repeated both in the fiction of a writing as well as in everyday life. Within the next paragraphs, I will comment on the similarities, and differences in the treatment of their mothers of the two main characters, will also cover the similarity

This speaks on a very deep level, in regards to the genuine warmth the author implied toward the mother in his piece. There is a subliminal truth of sentimental “value”, because the reality of this world is that all material wealth can be lost in a moment, but real wealth is not some slice of pie one luckily stumbles upon in the world, real wealth is first found in the human being, and the human becomes the reflective producer of these

The character Julian in the short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” was concerned about himself. Upon, first reading the short story, a person would think that Julian truly cared for black people. However, when taking a more in depth look at the story, his main concern was to get back at his mother. “He imagined his mother lying desperately ill and his being able to secure only a Negro doctor for her” (593). In addition to, him imagining his mother lying desperately ill, he begins to imagine the ultimate horror, “He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman” (593).

It’s amazing how pennies make friends that turn into millions and millions turn to betrayal by the best friend. Looking at a penny what do most people see? Most don’t look at a penny and see a fortune, most see a penny on the ground and pass it right on by. It’s a penny what can it do? The first part of this film gives a mass symbolism to the penny and its role in penny stocks.

From the beginning of the story we see that it’s clear Julian’s mother is obsessed with her appearance. The fact that her family once had political influence and wealth (p.407), not to mention power over the lives of 200 slaves (p.408), and now no longer has it, deeply troubles her, prompting her to overcompensate for this loss by always dressing and looking her best in public. When the violet hat is first introduced we learn that, “[t]he hat was new and had cost her seven dollars and a half,” (p.405) She later states that she could, “pay the gas bill with seven fifty,” (p.407). It is clear that with those prices and her issues with integration that this story took place in the 1960s. From this we know that Julian’s mom has expensive taste in clothing. Which reveals that she puts her appearance before her bills, emphasizing the importance of her sense of identity is. Her identity is what sets her apart from the rest of society, and is what her ancestors used to elevate themselves above African Americans. It is apparent throughout the story that Julian’s mother has a preconceived notion of how things in society should be, depicting her to be a bigot. This is a result of her upbringing, it’s all she’s ever known. The reason why segregation was so important to poor Southerners was because they were

Flannery O' Connor's short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is about racial judgment in the south in the 1960's. O' Conors main focus in this story is how the white middle class viewed and treated people from different races in the 1960's. The story is an example of irony, redemption as well as a struggle of identity among the characters. The main characters in O'Connor's story are Julian an aspiring writer, who works as a typewriter salesmen, and his mother who is a low-middle class racist white woman who has strong views about thvxe African-American race. Both Julian and his mother are great depictions of the white mindsets of racial integration in the

From my own understanding, all stories in an anthology must be similar in one way or another for the sake of cohesion. However, each story must be unique to avoid similarities with other stories. With Everything That Rises Must Converge, its cohesion is found within its theme. Yet, reading the entire anthology felt as if it was split in half.