Everything That Rises Must Converge

First published in 1961 at the height of the civil rights movement, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” explores the themes of The Complexity of Morality, Generational Conflict, and the associations between Class, Appearance, and Reality. The story takes place in an unnamed Southern town that has recently been desegregated. By 1961, the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, Rosa Parks’s arrest had inspired the Montgomery bus boycott, and sit-ins were happening across the country to protest segregated seating at lunch counters. However, desegregation and the concept of equal rights were still met with staunch resistance from white communities across the South. “Everything That Rises Must Converge” centers on the tension between a white mother and son who claim to be on opposite sides of the desegregation debate: the college-educated Julian and his elderly mother, a woman who believes Black people “should rise […] but on their own side of the fence” (186). Through this conflict between Julian and his mother, O’Connor explores the larger cultural changes playing out across the South.