The short story "Everything That Rises Must Converge", by Flannery O’Connor tells the story of Julian, the main character and his thoughts and feelings toward his mother. Julian is a college graduate who has a fair understating of the world he lives in, and because of this finds difficulty dealing with his mother and her views of the world. The story begins with Julian and his mother taking their regular trip downtown to the YMCA. Julian is often embarrassed by his mother’s feelings toward Blacks; she refers to them as the lower class and reminisces of life on the plantation in the south. Julian takes every opportunity of opposing her views because he finds her thoughtless remarks annoying. He often dreams of holding conversations with "distinguished-looking blacks" and contemplates bringing one home as lover. Despite his urges toward Blacks, the black women sitting next to him on the bus annoys him. By this encounter, it clear that Julian himself has not fully embraced multiculturalism despite how much he wants to. His mother carries herself as a woman of upper society and this is reflected by her actions and attitudes. For example, when Julian and her are waiting for the bus and Julian takes off his tie, she tells him he is embarrassing her because he looks like thug. She also does not want to show up for weight loss class without her hat and gloves. These actions were reserved exclusively for ladies when she was younger and she continues with them, however in today’s world it is not customary. No matter what Julian or any one else says, she will not relinquish those practices. She glorifies the fact that her grandfather was a plantation owner with one hundred slaves and dismisses the plights of blacks by saying, "They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence". It is clear that his mother has difficulty dealing with the changes of today’s current society. Evidence that times have change is given by the fact that the colored woman sitting on the bus was wearing the same hat Julian’s mother was wearing. This indicates that not only white women of statue now wear big hats. Julian’s mother is put in her place when the woman with the big hat refuses her charity of a penny to her little boy. Julian has a lot to offer to his mother in how the new world is changing, and his mother can teach him the history racism.
Author Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google making us Stupid,” discusses how the use of the computer affects our thought process. Carr starts out talking about his own experience as a writer and how he felt like “something had been tinkering with his brain, remapping his neural circuitry and reprogramming his memory”(313). Basically, he is acknowledging that since he started using the Internet his research techniques have changed. Carr believes that before he would immerse himself in books, lengthy articles and long stretches of prose allowing his mind to get caught up in the narrative or the
Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
Flannery O’Connor believed in the power of religion to give new purpose to life. She saw the fall of the old world, felt the force and presence of God, and her allegorical fictions often portray characters who discover themselves transforming to the Catholic mind. Though her literature does not preach, she uses subtle, thematic undertones and it is apparent that as her characters struggle through violence and pain, divine grace is thrown at them. In her story “Revelation,” the protagonist, Mrs. Turpin, acts sanctimoniously, but ironically the virtue that gives her eminence is what brings about her downfall. Mrs. Turpin’s veneer of so called good behavior fails to fill the void that would bring her to heaven. Grace hits her with force and their illusions, causing a traumatic collapse exposing the emptiness of her philosophy. As Flannery O’Connor said, “In Good Fiction, certain of the details will tend to accumulate meaning from the action of the story itself, and when this happens they become symbolic in the way they work.” (487). The significance is not in the plot or the actual events, but rather the meaning is between the lines.
“Everything that Rises Must Converge” also contains two supposedly superior characters, Julian and his mother. Julian’s mother believes that she is superior because her grandfather was a former governor, a prosperous landowner with two-hundred slaves. She also believes that being white makes her superior to people of other races. She believes that those people should rise, but “on their own side of the fence” (pg. 214). Later in the story she offends a “Negro” woman by her patronizing treatment of the woman’s child. This woman is so upset that she physically attacks Julian’s mother (pg. 221). Julian also sees himself as superior. He feels superior to his mother because he does not see himself as racist. In reality he is as much a racist as his mother, but he shows his racism in a different way, seeking out those who he terms “some of the better types” to befriend (pg.
We immediately learn that Miss Moore is not the average Harlem teacher. She is educated herself, along with being very opinionated. The children explain that she has nappy hair and no makeup, probably signifying that she was a...
Advancements in technology have strived to make life easier for so many people. In most cases, the advancements have achieved its goal, but in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr questions if the improvements in society have unintentionally hindered our thought process overall. Carr begins the article by providing personal instances when his concentration seemed to diminish due to the internet. He explains how he now loses interest when reading lengthy portions, his mind just can’t seem to remain connected to his readings. He then proceeds to talk about how today’s life is surrounded by the internet, and explains the pros and cons of it. The negative side of it is that his mind now wonders off when seeking information from
Julian’s mother is a to be an older white lady that goes to the YMCA to lose some weight, but at the same time is all about where her status is at. She would like to think that she is very important person, she wears her hat and gloves to go to the Y to work out and she wants her son to maintain a certain look of being a well-off person otherwise she thinks he is a “thug” for not being proper at all times. She is also a self-absorbed person, in the first page all she can talk about is her and that hat she just bought. Going back and forth on if she should keep it or not, it’s almost as if she needs her son to say that this hat looks good on her, and even after he tells her the hat looks fine she goes on to have everything be about her and “knowing who she is.” Flannery O’ Conner never really gives Julian’s mother a name, however it is very obvious that is thinks that she is above colored people and a racist, “She would not ride the buses by herself at night since they had been integrated.” (PG.1) Being brought up in the time period that she did she completely believed that Africans are better off being slaves. She points out in page 5 that the only reason she will not ride the bus by herself is because an African person was able to sit somewhat close to her and her narrow mindedness thinks that this is unfair in a sense. Julian’s mother thinks so high of hersel...
Atlantic journalist Nicholas Carr confesses that he feels something has been “tinkering with his brain.” The internet, he fears, may be messing with our minds. We have lost the ability to focus on a simple task, and memory retention is steadily declining. He is worried about the effect the internet has on the human brain, and where it may take us in the future. In response to this article, Jamais Cascio, also a journalist for the Atlantic, provides his stance on the issue. He argues that this different way of thinking is an adaptation derived from our environment. Ultimately, he thinks that this staccato way of thinking is simply a natural evolution, one that will help to advance the human race.
I was late for school, and my father had to walk me in to class so that my teacher would know the reason for my tardiness. My dad opened the door to my classroom, and there was a hush of silence. Everyone's eyes were fixed on my father and me. He told the teacher why I was late, gave me a kiss goodbye and left for work. As I sat down at my seat, all of my so-called friends called me names and teased me. The students teased me not because I was late, but because my father was black. They were too young to understand. All of this time, they thought that I was white, because I had fare skin like them, therefore I had to be white. Growing up having a white mother and a black father was tough. To some people, being black and white is a contradiction in itself. People thought that I had to be one or the other, but not both. I thought that I was fine the way I was. But like myself, Shelby Steele was stuck in between two opposite forces of his double bind. He was black and middle class, both having significant roles in his life. "Race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that" (Steele 211).
Early in the short film the woman is seen rushing to get to her train, while doing so, she drops some of her belongings. A black man quickly bends down to help her, but she refuses his help. In doing so the woman displays prejudice. She showed that she has an unjustifiable, negative attitude towards a group. By telling the man to stop touching her things she makes known that her prejudice is explicit, or an attitude that was deliberately formed and easy to
These two articles are similar in the sense that they agree that the internet and computational objects are reshaping our brain’s structure by changing our neural circuit. By using examples from their personal experiences to identify a trend in technology use, the authors illustrate that the more we bury ourselves in technology the more we are unable to understand material which leads to loss of concentration and the ability to think for ourselves. As an author, Carr finds the internet a beneficial tool, but it’s having a bad effect on his concentration span. Carr points this out by stating “Immersing myself in a book or lengthy article used to be easy, now I get fidgety, lose the thread and begin looking for something else to do” (39). He is no
This story takes place in the south during the civil rights movement when people were trying to eliminate poverty and racism from the society that they lived in. There are four important characters in this story, and the two main ones are Julian and his mother. Julian is a recent college graduate who lives with his mother but knows “some day [he’ll] start making money” (Mays 448). Julian sees the world as ever changing during the civil rights movement and does not like or condone racism. Although this is true he subconsciously is small minded and petty just like his mother. His mother often makes racist remarks and will not find herself sitting next to a black African American adult. She often would bring up the topic of race to Julian “every few days like a train on an open track” (Mays 449). She also makes her son ride the bus with her to the YMCA because of the new changes due to the civil rights movement and in some ways this makes Julian mad. As they begin to board the bus Julian and his mother argue but quickly board. Shortly later a black woman and her son named Carver board. Carver sits next to Julian’s mother, she does not mind, and Carver’s mother sits next to Julian. Carver’s mother is an impatient woman who ironically wears the same hat as Julian’s mother. The hat in many ways is a symbol of the ever changing south during the civil rights movement. It symbolizes the social equality between
Carr discusses the effects that the Internet has on our minds and the way we think, as well as the way media has changed. Our minds no longer focus. When in conversation with people we are constantly distracted by the technological advances our era has brought. Text messages, emails, pop culture drama has all taken over thoughts.
This short story makes the gender roles in the Southern culture very clear. Even though the grandmother is very talkative it is her mouth that put them all in danger. If she had not claimed to recognize the Misfit he probably would have let them go, but the grandmother also foreshadowed the dangerous situation happening before it happened. This irony is what I believe the author uses to draw attention to the gender roles within Southern culture. I believe the author allows the grandmother to have insight of how this misfit she saw the newspaper would be ultimately the end of their lives. If her son would have considered what she said about encountering the Misfit, he could have prevented their death. When her son chose to ignore her, it was a representation of how women’s opinion was ignored in society. The short story didn't seem to have much tension or mention about race other than the display of how the family interacted with themselves and with other African Americans. Finally, this story raises questions about class because it shows how the children treated people with a lower economic status. This family is portrayed as a working or middle-class family because the daughter knows how to tap dance, and their family is going on a vacation. The children treat people with a lower economic status poorly with a lot of disrespect. On page 4 the daughter speaks disrespectfully
In the short story “ A Dead Woman’s Secret by Guy de Maupassant, the basic theme is devoted to family and private relationships. The main characters in the story are Marguerite (the daughter), the judge (the son), the priest, and the deceased mother. Marguerite is a nun and she is very religious. The dead woman’s son, the Judge, handled the law as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without pity. The story begins by telling the reader that the woman had died quietly, without pain. The author is very descriptive when explaining the woman’s appearance - “Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as though she had done it up ten minutes before dying. The whole pale countenance of the dead woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that one could feel what a sweet soul had lived in that body, what a quiet existence this old soul had led, how easy and pure the death of this parent had been” (1). The children had been kneeling by their mother’s bed for awhile just admiring her. The priest had stopped by to help the children pass by the next hours of great sadness, but the children decided that they wanted to be alone as they spend the last few hours with their mother. Within in the story, the author discusses the relationship between the children’s father and their mother. The father was said to make the mother most unhappy. Great