blog post #4 - short stories

Question: #1 - Answer: Everything That Rises Must Converge

While any piece of literature can delve deep into the abstract, particular stand-outs thrive on concrete social connotations. Rather than theoretical personal insights, these works depict real people in real problems in real situations. Backed by a heightened simplicity, Everything That Rises Must Converge brilliantly deconstructs the sentiments of the Old South as it collapses under a modern reality. Because of its layered allusions, this short story lures readers with seeming simplicity, while still suggesting the most complex of issues.

Two very defined conflicts, racial tensions in the mid 20th century and the southern aristocracy's struggle to maintain prominence, descend into serious thematic undertones. The mother's reaction to her son's seat next to a black woman, the family's fall from grace, and the son's own personal weaknesses sting the readers' consciences. While the fundamental conflict, that between a failed son and his nostalgic mother, does not dive into indecipherable convolution, it does provoke thought on the nature of the South's complex problems.

Most deceivingly simplistic of all is the mother. Seemingly racist, ignorant, and pitifully innocent, she suffers the intellectual snipes of her collegiate son. She snarls when he fronts genuine respect for blacks; she reproaches him for detesting his elite heritage. Plotwise, Julian's mother is the ultimate victim: she dies as her heart can no longer bear the errors of her perspective. Yet the son, the apparent protagonist in the struggle against discrimation, is no poster child for reform-minded readers. The kid doesn't have a job; he busies himself with worthless thinking. He still lives off his mother, for God's sake. And when he sits next to the black man, he does not do so out of respect but out of spite for his mother. He less represents change than the oppostion to it.

Through Julian's weakness, his mother's true strengths emerge. Her persistence, her dedication, her devotion: those qualities could never be matched by Julian's attempts at a heightened sense of awareness. Though she still holds on a dream she could never reach, that of retaining her family's past glory, her son has already lost his purpose. He is jaded, cold, and self-absorbed: not exactly your liberal advocate for progress, either.

In the end, it is Julian who suffers the most. For the mother, "everything that rises" constitues her false hopes and her racial intolerances, and she dies from them. For the son, "what must converge" is his cruel behavior toward his only patron; now he must live on without suffering. As the South lives on, trying to reclaim itself, Julian is the true loser.