Old South vs. New South in O'Conner's Everything That Rises Must Converge
Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge" depicts a stifling mother-son relationship in which the conflict is never resolved, or even acknowledged. This relationship is a metaphor which describes the transition from the Old South, with its inherent values used to justify slavery and segregation, to the New South, striving for justice based on equality. Mrs, Chestney (old South) and her son Julian (New South) represent, on an individual scale, the interactions of their corresponding constituencies, "'The world is a mess everywhere... I don't know how we've let it get in this mess", states Mrs, Chestney on the subject of segregation, Unintentionally, she implicates her kind as the party responsible for the tension between Negroes [sic.] and Whites, She is saying, in effect, "We dominated this race of people. Now it has become too difficult for us to maintain that control." Naturally, she feels threatened. Josephine Hendin wrote that:
The desegregation of buses and the general rise of the Negro seem to her so much chaos, a chaos in which the old and the young, the present and the past, must violently collide.
Blacks encroaching upon the power structure which is integral to her behavior have forced her to either reassess her behavior, or substantiate it. She is an old woman, whose meaning to life is reliant upon segregation, and she will, in every case, opt for the latter, In her discourse with her son, Julian, she proudly refers to a great-grandfather who was a slave owner, the tragedy of "half-whites", and, as proof for not riding integrated buses alone, a large Black passenger sitting adjacent to her, reading a newspaper. Her mani...
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...s and is now yearning for a "darky" nurse's care. Only then does Julian react to the circumstances, in a panic. He helplessly watches his mother die, and then realizes how dependent on her he truly is, As the Old South dies, the New South emerges. The descendant cannot sever the tie to its predecessor, nor ignore its effect on the next generation. As a society, our evolution to a point without racism may be a long process.
Works Cited
Feeley, Kathleen, Flannery O'Connor: Voice Of The Peacock. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972.
Hendin, Josephine. The World of Flannery O'Connor. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1970.
O'Connor, Flannery. Everything That Rises Must Converge. New York: The Noonday Press, 1956,
Stephens, Martha. The Question of Flannery O'Connor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.
Feeley, Kathleen, S.S.N.D. Flannery O'Connor: Voice of the Peacock. New York: Fordham University Press; 2 edition, 2010.
I want to start off this analysis essay of the book, “Separate Pasts,” by author MeltonMcLaurin, That it was really well written account of a world that for me, a 21st century youngwomen from a more open community, is completely foreign, and honestly disconnected. Thevery human connection between the reality of the segregated south and the author did allot forme to come to a better grasp of how racism in the south persisted. The fact that he lived in the eraand gave us the theme of change vs tradition throughout the book, gives me an insight of boththe past and present. The author Melton McLaurin reflects on his pasts by recalling his memoriesof growing up in Wade, North Carolina his hometown. During the time, McLaurin is in thesegregated south working in his grandfather’s store; there he starts to observe how he interactsbetween white community and black community, and how each ones’ lifestyles are worlds apart,even though they live in the same town. In the book, McLaurin also describes the influentialblack people in the community of Wade, North Carolina that influenced his views of racism andsegregation. He is teaching us more about the southern history because he actually lived it, thenmost historians that give facts then what people actually thought and felt in that time. McLaurintakes the reader through his thoughts and emotional journey of his unwilling acceptance ofsegregation.To me the overall theme to the book was change vs tradition. As you can see during hisyounger years McLaurin did not understand how much his skin color played a part of hiseveryday life. He was very noble to the people despite there ethnicity and was able to create arelationship with both black and white people. Themes where used in the book and McLau...
Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.
... Although Flannery O’Connor didn’t even live to see her 40th birthday, her fiction endures to this day. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” O’Connor effectively deals with the two huge themes of religion and racism. These two themes are crucial to understanding much of O’Connor’s great works and are relevant to all readers of O’Connor throughout all ages.
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As the United States developed and grew, upward mobility was central to the American dream. It was the unstated promise that no matter where you started, you had the chance to grow and proceed beyond your initial starting point. In the years following the Civil War, the promise began to fade. People of all races strived to gain the representation, acknowledgement and place in this society. To their great devastation, this hope quickly dwindled. Social rules were set out by the white folk, and nobody could rise above their social standing unless they were seen fit to be part of the white race. The social group to be impacted the most by this “social rule” was the African Americans. Black folk and those who were sympathetic to the idea of equal rights to blacks were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. (Burton, 1998) The turning point in North Carolina politics was the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. It was a very bold and outrageous statement from the white supremacists to the black folk. The Democratic white supremacists illegally seized power from the local government and destroyed the neighborhood by driving out the African Americans and turning it from a black-majority to a white-majority city. (Class Discussion 10/3/13) This event developed the idea that even though an African American could climb a ladder to becoming somebody in his or her city, he or she will never become completely autonomous in this nation. Charles W. Chesnutt discusses the issue of social mobility in his novel The Marrow of Tradition. Olivia Carteret, the wife of a white supremacist is also a half-sister to a Creole woman, Janet Miller. As the plot develops, we are able to see how the social standing of each woman impacts her everyday life, and how each woman is ...
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Whitt, Margaret. Understanding Flannery O’Connor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 47-48, 78. Print.