The Use of Setting in A Pair of Tickets and Everything that Rises Must Converge

“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.

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.

In Everything that Rises Must Converge, Julian and his mother experience a moment of clarity in terms of contemplating on their actions and thoughts. Julian has always hated his mother for her traditional southern beliefs and ways. She even goes as far as to wish that she lived back in the past when she was a girl. She embodies the traditional pre-civil rights southerner who believes in being superior to someone else in terms of race, money, or any other factor. When she sees a black woman on the bus wearing the same hat she is wearing, she realizes that someone regarded as inferior by her standards, a black woman, is suddenly equal to her. She shows great discomfort and disapproval of this new ideal. When the black woman and her son are getting off of the bus, she approaches them and gives the child a penny as a sign of humiliation and inferiority. The black woman then hits her which causes her to fall to the ground. Julian’s mother falling to the ground shows a change in actions and thoughts for both her and Julian (Moore). Julian begins to tell her that she got what she deserved for giving her insulting pennies to black

In “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor, is a story of racial domestic violence between Julian’s mother and an African American woman who is trying to keep her son away from her. The story is in a third person point of view which means none of the characters is the narrator, however, it does show Julian’s thoughts during the story. The third person narrator focuses on Julian, his mother, and their relationship which is a “parasitic relationship [that] establishes the prototype for parent and child figures” (Winn 192). Julian, despite being an adult, still lives with his mother and has a childlike attachment to her. His mother has a “deep connection of her identity with the intergenerational ties of family and history,

Jing-mei originally believed that in order to “be Chinese” one must live in China and abide by the stereotype of Chinese people; after her visit to China, she finds that “being Chinese” is accepting the Chinese DNA in her blood and understanding the culture. In the beginning of A Pair of Tickets, Jing-mei does not feel Chinese. She repeatedly denies being Chinese saying, “… and all of my Caucasian friends agreed: I was about as Chinese as they were” (Norton 179). She had never experienced the culture first-hand and never truly connected with her true heritage. She sees China in her visit. This is the first opportunity she has ever had to interact with other Chinese people. Coming from a social group of all Caucasian friends, first-hand interaction allows her to understand the Chinese people in a much more advanced manner. They seem less

In Flannery O’ Conner’s short story “Everything that Rises Must Converge” is focused on two main characters Julian and his mother, there is also Carver, Carvers mother, a well-dressed African man and another white woman these four characters are very important in this story because are significant to the point that Flannery O’ Conner is trying to make throughout this story.

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge” emphasizes the hostility and racial discrimination that white southerners exhibited towards African Americans as a result of integration during the 1960’s. This short story focuses not only on the white American’s living in poverty, but also accentuates the ways in which two people born in different generations react to racial integration. Having descended from a formerly wealthy slave owning family, Julian’s mother, who remains unnamed, struggles to support both herself and her son after slavery is abolished. The family’s poverty becomes evident after the mother regrets purchasing a hat, claiming that if she returned it she could pay the gas bills instead (O’Connor, par. 10). As a struggling writer and typewriter salesman, presumably in his early 20’s, Julian claims to have “lost his faith” in a struggle to reason with his racist mother (O’Connor, par. 10). Describing himself to be “saturated in depression”, it becomes unmistakable that Julian feels resentful towards his mother for his upbringing and current position in life (O’Connor, par. 10). His mother, who takes pride in the way she raised him, reasons, “…if you know who you are, you can go anywhere”, prompting a quick disagreement from her son, where he argues, “[that’s] good for one generation only” (O’Connor, par. 16). Through observing

When reading “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Conner, most of us will readily agree that it is a story about a young man and his mother. Where this agreement usually ends is when we ask if this was O’Conner’s intended theme. Whereas some are convinced that the relationship between mother and child is the main theme, others maintain that O’Conner was focusing on these characters adapting to social change during the Civil Rights era. I agree with the latter, that the central conflict of the story is that of social change and how both the old and new generations adapt to these changes.

Since he has a college education he believes that his views and ideas are more correct than his “foolish” mother’s, who believes that culture comes from the heart “and in how you do things” (438). This clearly explains why Julian believes himself to be superior to his mother, and also why her intentions are always good. O'Connor uses various kinds of irony in "Everything That Rises Must Converge" to lampoon racial prejudices while humorously depicting Julian's fantasies of superiority and his mother's unwelcome good intentions. Julian's spiteful feelings of superiority over his mother are what causes him to act so fraudulently in his stance toward African Americans and the dramatic irony enhances this.

Flannery O’Conner’s story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, concerns Julian, a recent college graduate, who plans on accompanying his mother to a weight-loss class. Because she still lives with the values of the old American south, she can’t take the bus alone now that it is integrated. The plot centers on how Julian claims he doesn’t agree with his mother’s racism, evincing that southern modernity is all about liberal views. However, I argue that the actual plot of the story satirizes Julian’s own liberal views while trying to distinguish himself from his mother.

Julian is the only character who logically would have attained an advanced education. “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is set in the South in the 1960s/70s, shortly after society integrated. So, unless a character is a white male from an affluent background, that character would not have gone to college. The only characters with whom Julian interacts are his mother, the black man and woman on the bus, and the woman’s son. Even so, Julian only interacts for a prolonged period of time with his mother, the woman, and her son. None of these three people would have gone to college. Julian’s mother would not have gone to college merely because she is a woman; at this point in time women would not have been expected to further their education, especially if they came from wealthy

A Pair of Tickets" by Amy Tan uses unpretentious yet intense symbolism and imagery to make a wonderful story with layers of importance and significant profundity that one can't completely acknowledge unless you read it more than once.

In “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, it appears to be what is a simple story. It seems that O’Connor has written this story which we can easily read and understand without having any struggle with abstract religion symbolism. Mrs. Chestny holds a different opinion about it she thinks that all blacks should rise, “but on their own side of the fence.” Because she offers a penny to a small black child, in the point of view of her son she is. With all the humiliation that Julian gets by a child's mother. Julian says that the black women that hits Mrs. Chestny with her purse represents “the whole colored race which no longer take your condescending pennies.” Julian also recognizes that “the old manners are obsolete” and also that his mother’s “graciousness is not worth a damn.” As well he who begins to realize, that as we watch his mother die from the blow that the world is not that simple as we thought he was. As they say it is not a world in which everything is either black or white. That is when we realize that “Everything that Rises Must Converge” is not in its entirely a simple story.

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, O’Connor uses the symbolism of the violet hat and the shiny new penny along with all of the things Julian’s mother has done for him throughout his life, to place the broader societal conflict of race relations within the context of the unstable relationship Julian has with his mother, showing how poor southern whites used blacks to elevate themselves. Julian’s clashes with his mother over morals, race, and appearances mimic the greater conflict of racial relations in society.

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