In a structure akin to "Big Meeting" and "In Cuba I was a German Shepherd", the narrator of Flannery O'Connor's "Everything that Rises Must Converge", Julian, does not come to realize his mistakes until the story's finale. Unlike the previous narrators, however, Julian is not an ethnic American, but a white male. Forced to deal with a racist mother during a time of racial integration, Julian is a black sympathizer who detests his mother's patronizing attitude towards black people. Despite his perceived positive feelings towards blacks, however, Julian must accept that he, too, possesses his own racial prejudices.
Readers are immediately informed that Julian's mother fears black people, refusing to "ride the buses by herself at night since they had been integrated" (56). Not only that, but she also harbors the belief that the blacks were better off as slaves and should stay "on their own side of the fence" (57). Julian must accompany her on the bus so she can attend her weekly sessions at a weight reducing class in spite of their conflicting views and inevitable arguments about race. Unlike his mother, Julian considers himself a liberal who favors integration, "free of prejudice and unafraid to face facts" (59). He purposely goes out of his way to prove to his mother how different he is from her - when riding the bus alone, "he [makes] it a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother's sins" (58). Once on the bus with his mother, he goes as far as to change his seat in order to sit beside a black man, turning to glare at his mother "as if he had openly declared war on her" (59). |
To further spite his mother, Julian attempts to start a conversation with the black man, but his attempts are awkward and ineffective - as it turns out, most of his conversations with black people are. He imagines his mother falling ill and hiring a black doctor to treat her, or "the ultimate horror... bringing home a suspiciously Negroid woman" (60). Julian believes his efforts to converse with black people are due to his open-mindedness, but in reality, he simply wants no more than "to teach [his mother] a lesson" (60). It slowly becomes apparent that Julian is in denial of his own prejudices, and while he is not racist like his mother, his intentions are not as pure as he believes.
After a tense encounter with a black woman and her child on the bus, Julian's mother, who thinks "little Negroes [are] on the whole cuter than little white children", attempts to give the child a penny (60). This condescending act results in the black woman hitting Julian's mother with her pocketbook, knocking her to the ground. Initially, Julian shows no sympathy for his mother, asserting that she "got what [she] deserved", but his reaction changes when she collapses on the sidewalk. At this moment, Julian's demeanor completely changes from smug to horrified - he scrambles to find help, but "the lights drifted farther away the faster he ran and his feet moved numbly as if they carried him nowhere" (62). Julian's mother may have finally learned her lesson, but at what cost? The black woman has completely changed Julian and his mother's world around; Julian and his mother are relics from the slave days, and the future has defeated them. |