North American Fiction and Film

Chapter 8: Flannery O'Connor's
Everything That Rises Must Converge


O'Connor occupies an interesting position in American Literature to the extent that she writes from a strongly religious point of view, specifically from a strongly Deep Southern Roman Catholic point of view. (If you wish to find out a little more about Flannery O'Connor's life and works it would be a good idea to read the short introduction by Hermione Lee in your set text Everything That Rises Must Converge.) Even more interesting, perhaps, is the fact that her stories make use of what might be regarded as quite bizarre effects such as the grotesque and the blackly humorous to convey her deeply religious vision. What all these stories have in common is Flannery O'Connor's concern with the articulation of her faith. Often these stories are about people who have lost their faith and the focus of the story then becomes the reintroduction of these people to the power of God and the power of God's grace, more often than not achieved in violent ways. Let's now explore these ideas through the stories.

Table of Contents

Everything That Rises Must Converge: Discussion

Conclusion

Review questions
Works Cited


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"Everything That Rises Must Converge"

"Everything That Rises Must Converge," the title story in your collection, in a sense sums up O'Connor's overall philosophy or theology: that is, that everything which rises above the petty concerns of earth, above materialism, must converge somewhere in an ideal realm, that is, Heaven. The story concerns Julian and his mother and a series of misunderstandings between them. We find that Julian's mother is overweight, rude to other people, particularly to Black people, and very judgmental. Julian in turn spends a lot of his time judging his mother. The story focuses on a bus trip that Julian and his mother are taking to the Y's reducing class, and what happens in the course of that trip.

During the bus trip, Julian's mother openly sympathises with some other white women who don't like "Negroes" on the bus. When a Black man gets on the bus, Julian attempts to be friendly with him and in so doing sees himself as morally superior to his mother. We see here that Julian is being very judgmental. For instance, we find Julian entertaining these thoughts after the man has got off the bus:
He imagined his mother lying desperately ill and his being able to secure only a Negro doctor for her. He toyed with that idea for a few minutes and then dropped it for a momentary vision of himself participating as a sympathiser in a sit-in demonstration. This was possible but he did not linger with it. Instead, he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare yourself, he said. There is nothing you can do about it. This is the woman I have chosen. (15)
It is just shortly after this fantasy that a very large Black woman and her little boy get on and Julian is somewhat delighted because the Negro woman is actually wearing the same hat as his mother, a hat that he has made fun of earlier in the story.

Julian reacts as follows:
His eyes widened.
The vision of the two hats, identical, broke upon him with the radiance of a brilliant sunrise. His face was suddenly lit with joy. He could not believe that Fate had thrust upon his mother such a lesson. He gave a loud chuckle so she would look at him and see that he saw. She turned her eyes on him slowly. The blue in them seemed to have turned a bruised purple. (17)
The outcome of the story is that Julian's mother tries to give the woman's little boy a nickel as they get off the bus.

The woman clearly doesn't want that and she knocks Julian's mother down. Julian's mother is left sitting on the sidewalk (20). Julian is quite delighted about this because he thinks his mother has received a lesson. But then he starts to become horrified when she doesn't want to go to the Y, she doesn't want to see him but wants Caroline to come and get her. And then it seems that the mother dies. The end of the story reads thus:
"Help help!" he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran and his feet moved numbly as if they carried him nowhere. The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow. (23)
In that very last line I think you get the "punch line" of the story ("his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow"): the "message" is basically the Christian one of "judge not lest ye be judged." Julian has judged his mother and now he is being judged because he suddenly realises that he loves her and she's gone. He is unable to reach her, and all the time he's been judging her rather than showing practical evidence of his love for her.
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"Greenleaf"

The next story, "Greenleaf," is a somewhat more dramatic and violent exposition of the workings of grace. The story takes its title from the name of a family who work on the property of a Mrs May. Throughout the story, contrasts are built up between Mrs May's children, who haven't been terribly successful, and Mrs Greenleaf's children, who somehow seem to have succeeded even though Mrs May regards them as very low down on the social scale. Mrs Greenleaf becomes the subject of some satire in the story in terms of her fundamentalist Christianity.

For example, there is an instance in which Mrs May comes across Mrs Greenleaf sprawled on her hands and knees on the side of the road with her head down:
"Mrs Greenleaf!" she shrilled, "what's happened?"
Mrs Greenleaf raised her head. Her face was a patchwork of dirt and tears and her small eyes, the colour of two field peas, were red-rimmed and swollen, but her expression was composed as a bulldog's. She swayed back and forth on her hands and knees and groaned, "Jesus, Jesus." (31)
Mrs May, of course, doesn't like this very much and feels that Mrs Greenleaf is, so to speak, "over the top." As we are told:
She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true. "What is the matter with you?" she asked sharply. (31)
We feel in the story that while O'Connor doesn't approve of Mrs May's lack of any real Christian spirit, she probably doesn't approve of Mrs Greenleaf's excess of spirit either.

The end of the story focuses on a bull which keeps breaking into Mrs May's property. This bull takes on a symbolic function when we find Mrs May pursuing the bull trying to get it off her property:
She looked back and saw that the bull, his head lowered, was racing toward her. She remained perfectly still, not in fright, but in a freezing unbelief. She stared at the violent black streak bounding toward her as if she had no sense of distance, as if she could not decide at once what his intention was, and the bull had buried his head in her lap, like a wild tormented lover, before her expression changed. One of his horns sank until it pierced her heart and the other curved around her side and held her in an unbreakable grip. She continued to stare straight ahead but the entire scene in front of her had changed-the tree line was a dark wound in a world that was nothing but sky-and she had the look of a person whose sight has been suddenly restored but who finds the light unbearable. (52-53)
In that dreadful revelation what we are seeing happening to Mrs May, or what we are perhaps supposed to understand, is that Mrs May has received the grace of God.

The bull becomes symbolic of Christ piercing her heart and that's actually stressed at the very end of the story (53). While Mr Greenleaf shoots the bull Mrs May reacts somewhat differently:
He shot the bull four times through the eye. She did not hear the shots but she felt the quake in the huge body as it sank, pulling her forward, on its head, so that she seemed, when Mr Greenleaf reached her, to be bent over whispering some last discovery into the animal's ear. (53)
And this last discovery, we are to assume, is her re-discovery of God's grace.
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"A View of the Woods"

"A View of the Woods," the next story, is much more symbolically complicated. (You have probably come to the conclusion as I talk about these stories, and obviously through your own reading of them, that O'Connor is a very complex writer in terms of her use of symbolism in addition to those elements of the grotesque and blackly humorous that I mentioned earlier.)

"A View of the Woods" focuses on the relationship of Mary Fortune Pitts, a little girl, and her grandfather, Mr Fortune. The story is one of conflict that mounts to tragedy in the end. The conflict is basically between Mary Fortune and her grandfather over the sale of some ground that Mary Fortune finds important for her father's grazing of his cattle and for the view of the woods. You might look carefully at the woods in this story because they assume a symbolic significance similar to the woods in "Greenleaf."

In many ways I think the woods can be seen as the Garden of Eden. When they are sold, they are sold to a man called Tilman, and he is represented as a serpent:
Tilman was a man of quick action and few words. He sat habitually with his arms folded on the counter and his insignificant head weaving snake-fashion above them. He had a triangular-shaped face with the point at the bottom and the top of his skull was covered with a cap of freckles. His eyes were green and very narrow and his tongue was always exposed in his partly opened mouth. He had his chequebook handy and they got down to business at once. It did not take him long to look at the deed and sign the bill of sale and Mr Fortune signed it and they grasped hands over the counter. (76)
The idea here would appear to be that in selling the land to Tilman, Mr Fortune is actually handing the Garden of Eden over to the control of the serpent.

There is a lot made of their respective surnames earlier in the story, when the little girl and the grandfather are actually arguing over the land, and this supports this particular reading:
She turned and looked him straight in the face and said with a slow concentrated ferocity, "It's the lawn. My Daddy grazes his calves there. We won't be able to see the woods any more."
The old man held his fury as long as he could. "He beats you!" he shouted. "And you worry about where he's going to graze his calves!"
"Nobody's ever beat me in my life," she said "and if anyone did, I'd kill him."
A man seventy-nine years of age cannot let himself be run over by a child of nine. His face set in a look that was just as determined as hers. "Are you a Fortune," he said, "or are you a Pitts? Make up your mind."
Her voice was loud and positive and belligerent. "I'm Mary-Fortune-Pitts," she said.
"Well I," he shouted, "am PURE Fortune!" (74)
I think what we are getting in this play of names, if we look at it in terms of the theological setting or context, is that the little girl is acknowledging that she belongs to the Pitts; that is, she belongs to the world which is governed by God, and she accepts being governed by God as indicated by her permitting her father to chastise her. Mr Fortune doesn't believe in this, however: he believes in "fortune," the power of money.

The situation develops into conflict after the land has been sold (79). The little girl takes her glasses off and belts him, and as she belts him, there is a description of five claws going into the flesh of his upper arm so that the little girl almost becomes the figure of the devil. The tragic ending comes when the old man looks up into Mary's face as she sits on his chest, a face which is "his own image", and this image says: "'You been whipped,' it said, 'by me,' and then it added, bearing down on each word, 'and I'm PURE Pitts.'" The old man reverses the situation and belts his little grandchild's head three times against the rock and kills her. He then says: "'There's not an ounce of Pitts in me'" (80).

Suddenly, he becomes edged with doubt. You get the sensation towards the end of the story that he is actually having a heart attack when we're told: "his heart expanded once more with a convulsive motion" (80). He flies off in the direction of the woods looking for an opening, looking to escape, but all he finds is that the place is deserted "except for one huge yellow monster which sat to the side, as stationery as he was, gorging itself on clay" (81).

This is the earthmoving machine that we're told about in the early part of the story which he and his grandchild watch and we get the feeling that, because he has denied the role of God, because he has been led to murder, because he doesn't acknowledge that he is part of the earth, part of the Pitts, he can't really be "saved" for Heaven. All he can actually come back to is the earth, death and destruction. As I said, it is a far more complex story symbolically and one that is very interesting to look at.
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"The Enduring Chill"

Many of the ideas we've already encountered are explored again in the next story, "The Enduring Chill." This story focuses on Asbury, a young man who fancies himself as a writer but who is convinced he is going to die young. Right from the very start we have the feeling that, as in the other stories, Christ/God is present through the figure of the sun:
The sky was a chill gray and a startling white gold sun, like some strange potentate from the east, was rising beyond the black woods that surrounded Timberboro. (82)
As the story proceeds it centres on the relationships between Asbury, his mother and Dr Block who attends Asbury and Asbury's growing conviction that he is shortly going to die, hence the title of the story, "The Enduring Chill."

Another major symbol in the development of Asbury's obsession figures through the watermark or the water stain on the ceiling of Asbury's bedroom:
When she was gone, he lay for some time staring at the water stains on the gray walls. Descending from the top moulding, long icicle shapes had been etched by leaks and, directly over his bed on the ceiling, another leak had made a fierce bird with spread wings. It had an icicle crosswise in its beak and there were smaller icicles depending from its wings and tail. It had been there since his childhood and had always irritated him and sometimes had frightened him. He had often had the illusion that it was in motion about to descend mysteriously and set the icicle on his head. He closed his eyes and thought: I won't have to look at it for many more days. And presently he went to sleep. (93)
Clearly what is being suggested here is the peace of the Holy Ghost.

In what is the climatic centre of the story, Asbury has a visit from a Roman Catholic Priest who accuses him of ignorance:
"How can the Holy Ghost fill your soul when it's full of trash?" the Priest roared. "The Holy Ghost will not come until you see yourself as you are-a lazy ignorant conceited youth!" he said, pounding his fist on the little bedside table. (107)
This is confirmed as the story proceeds because we find out that Asbury isn't really that sick at all: he only has a form of undulant fever and is going to live.

At the very end of the story Asbury seems to give up his aspiration to be a great writer as he accepts the presence and power of Christ instead:
The old life in him was exhausted. He awaited the coming of new. It was then that he felt the beginning of a chill, a chill so peculiar, so light, that it was like a warm ripple across the deeper sea of cold. His breath came short. The fierce bird which through the years of his childhood and the days of his illness had been poised over his head, waiting mysteriously, appeared all at once to be in motion. Asbury blanched and the last film of illusion was torn as if by a whirlwind from his eyes. He saw that for the rest of his days, frail, racked, but enduring, he would live in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend. (114)
So here again very clearly, as in many of the other O'Connor stories we have looked at already, we see the importance of grace, the importance of the descent of the Holy Spirit into the life of the major character in the story.
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"The Comforts of Home"

As in "Everything That Rises Must Converge," "The Comforts of Home" focuses on the relationship between a sanctimonious son and his mother. In this case the mother is a very good person who is trying to help out a prostitute. The son, Thomas, believes this is just not possible. The relationship between the two is summed up as follows:
Thomas loved his mother. He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times where he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery and he sensed about him forces, invisible currents entirely out his control. She proceeded always from the tritest of considerations-it was the nice thing to do-into the most foolhardy engagements with the Devil, whom, of course, she never recognised.

The Devil for Thomas was only a manner of speaking, but it was a manner appropriate to the situations his mother got into. Had she been in any degree intellectual, he could have proved to her from early Christian history that no excess of virtue is justified, that a moderation of good produces likewise a moderation in evil. That if Antony of Egypt had stayed at home and attended to his sister no Devils would have plagued him. (118-119)
Clearly, like many of the other characters we have seen in the O'Connor stories, Thomas really does not believe in the Christian scheme of things. He does not believe in the Devil.

As the story proceeds a young lady whose real name is Sarah Ham but who goes by the name of Star Drake (we could assume some mystical significance in the name Star), gets more and more into Thomas' life and, we are told, even succeeds in invading his bedroom. In the end Thomas, in an attempt to get rid of her, plants a revolver in Star's red pocket book. The outcome is not what he would have expected because the girl accuses Thomas of having planted the gun to his mother, his mother rejects the accusation and in an ensuing struggle the girl attempts to strangle Thomas. When the mother throws herself between the two of them, Thomas, incited by the Sheriff, fires the gun and shoots his mother instead.

Thus the story very much, as in "Everything That Rises Must Converge," ends up with the spirit of goodness (that is, the mother) being killed. The moral of the story is then emphasised at the end:
Over her body, the killer and the slut were about to collapse into each other's arms. The Sheriff knew a nasty bit when he saw it. He was accustomed to enter scenes that were not as bad as he hoped to find them, but this one met his expectations. (142)
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"The Lame Shall Enter First"

"The Lame Shall Enter First" concentrates on the relationship between Sheppard and, on the one hand, his son Norton, and on the other a boy in a reformatory, Johnson. Sheppard's wife is dead and Norton misses his mother. Sheppard can't understand Norton at all and chooses to spend all of his time helping Johnson, who tells him that Satan has him in his power (150). Sheppard of course does not believe in Satan and tries to rationalise the whole situation.

He brings Johnson home and Johnson interferes with Norton's mother's belongings which, of course, greatly upsets Norton. Sheppard's reaction to this is that Norton really needs to learn how to share things. Johnson reacts very badly to this and plays Sheppard off against his son. When Sheppard leaves the room after he has told Johnson that he thinks he's good for Norton because Norton needs to share things, Johnson says: "'God kid . . . how do you stand it? . . He thinks he's Jesus Christ!'" (161).

As the story proceeds Johnson tries to get Sheppard to see that evil exists and that Satan actually runs the world as he sees it (164). The outcome of the story, as might be expected from the rest of O'Connor's stories, is that Sheppard is unable to use reason to change Johnson. Despite Sheppard's attempts to help Johnson walk better (hence the title "The Lame Shall Enter First") by giving him a wooden leg, Johnson sticks by his notion that what is really wrong with him is evil:
Sheppard said . . . "I am going to save you."
Johnson thrust his head forward. "Save yourself," he hissed. "Nobody can save me but Jesus." (180)
A little later Johnson says to Sheppard: "'The Devil has you in his power'" (185). He then disappears.

At the end of the story Johnson is caught by the police in further wrong-doing and Norton commits suicide by hanging himself from the window through which he has been trying to find his mother amongst the stars with a telescope. Towards the end Sheppard realises that he has confused good works with Christian faith. Works won't save you but great faith will:
Norton's face rose before him, empty, forlorn, his left eye listing almost imperceptibly toward the outer rim as if it could not bear a full view of grief. His heart constricted with a repulsion for himself so clear and intense that he gasped for breath. He had stuffed his own emptiness with good works like a glutton. He had ignored his own child to feed his vision of himself. He saw the clear-eyed Devil, the sounder of hearts, leering at him from the eyes of Johnson. His image of himself shrivelled until everything was black before him. He sat there paralysed, aghast. (190)
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"Revelation"

"Revelation" focuses on the patients in a Doctor's waiting room. One of the patients is Mrs Turpin who really believes that she is one of God's chosen. The early part of the story focuses on Mrs Turpin having conversations with other people in the waiting room as to who is worthwhile and who is not and, as in many of the other stories we've already looked at, O'Connor again takes up her concern with racial prejudice against Black Americans in the deep South.

The story reaches a climax when someone Mrs Turpin thinks is an ugly little girl sitting in the waiting room (Mary Grace) finally has enough of Mrs Turpin and picks up the book she is reading and throws it at her face:
The girl raised her head. Her gaze locked with Mrs Turpin's. "Go back to Hell where you came from, you old wart hog," she whispered. Her voice was low but clear. Her eyes burned for a moment as if she saw with pleasure that her message had struck its target. (207)
Mary Grace then has to be restrained, anaesthetised, and taken away.

The impact on Mrs Turpin is that she has to go away and actually think about her view of the world. One of her favourite occupations is thinking of all of the people she knows in her world and having them organised into hierarchies with herself, of course, at the top. At the very end Mrs Turpin has a moment of insight, an epiphany, when she realises that all of her views of the world are perhaps wrong. In a vision which shows the ascension into heaven on judgement day, everything is the reverse of what she had expected: the so called "niggers" and white trash come first, and all the people that she believes are good come at the end (217-218).

Again, this is the sort of story in which we are expected to see a person who is overly convinced of their own goodness, but who doesn't really practise true Christian charity, finally realising that their view of the world is a very wrong one from a Christian perspective.
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"Parker's Back"

"Parker's Back," the next story, is about a man who spends all of his time having tattoos applied to various parts of his body. He is tattooed everywhere but on his back which is why the story is called "Parker's Back." He is married, but he has no idea why he married and now that his wife is pregnant he's sick of her and sees her as plain and ugly. The woman is a very God fearing woman, and he has pursued her even though he's not sure why, and she sees all of his tattoos as vanity.

As the story proceeds, in order to please Sarah Ruth he decides to fill the one space left on his body (his back) with a tattoo and so he has a picture of what he thinks is God put on it. He goes to great expense and great pain over several days having the Tattooist create this picture of "God." When he gets home his wife thinks it's anything but God: "'He don't look,' Sarah Ruth said. 'He's a spirit. No man shall see his face'" (244).

And she then attacks him with the broom and sends him out of doors. He ends up against a large tree crying like a baby after he has been belted almost senseless. We are told that large welts have formed on the face of the tattooed Christ and we get the feeling here that Christ symbolically has been made to suffer again in order to save the soul of the tattooed man who doesn't understand idolatry, and who doesn't understand that Christ can only be "seen," that God can only be found, through faith.
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Conclusion

It can be seen, then, that O'Connor's stories relentlessly pursue the conveyance of a Christian vision. The stories are very well crafted and very effective. What we need to ask, of course, as with any idealist system, any system of faith, any transcendental system, is how does it really address "realism" -problems from the "real" world.

For example, we saw in many of O'Connor's stories the way that black Americans were treated. In terms of the Christian system she proposes, what effect does this have on their treatment? Is it the case that this idealist system avoids directly addressing social ills? This is an issue that you might like to think about yourself.

Personally I find O'Connor's stories very readable, but I do find problems in terms of the rigid adherence to a system of faith that perhaps she doesn't always show in terms of its addressing the material conditions in the world.
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Review questions

Works Cited

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Last updated August 1996
Comments to Dr John Fitzsimmons:
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