A Gracious Departure
College Composition II
Reader response – Analytical Essay
Word count – 1116
A Gracious Departure “Everything That Rises Must Converge", was written by Flannery O'Connor, an American author, who has been described as one of the most vigorous and original storytellers of her generation. With her controversial stories this author has played a very important role in the fight for Civil Rights. “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is a story linked to the struggle of whites and African Americans, to adjust to a changing worl,d and understand each other and the changes they would have to accept. This struggle obviously affected the writer and it remained evident in most of her work.
The story begins when Julian’s mother, a middle-aged white woman who was fearful of blacks, asked him to accompany her to town. Prior to departure, a discussion between the two characters leads to a clash of ideas about the social context. When they embark on the bus trip, Julian and his mother began to interact with people who think like her. With no blacks currently present on the bus, the group begins making derogatory comments about the “mixing of blacks with whites”. Julian disagrees with his mother’s beliefs seeks alternative ways to teach his mother a lesson. Meanwhile, on the bus a woman of color boards with her little son and takes a seat next to the protagonists, a fact which upset the mother further. Julian's mother gives a coin to the black child, assuming the family was poor and below her. The mother of the black boy was enraged and felt put down by the gesture and reacted by hitting Julian’s mother, resulting in her sudden death. The son, remorseful, ends up learning a bigger lesson himself, as the one he intended to teach his mother ended up backfiring on him.
The dark humor and violence that often characterized the author still remains in this story. The story’s essential conflict is racism and how two people within the same family have totally different
Reader response – Analytical Essay
Word count – 1116
A Gracious Departure “Everything That Rises Must Converge", was written by Flannery O'Connor, an American author, who has been described as one of the most vigorous and original storytellers of her generation. With her controversial stories this author has played a very important role in the fight for Civil Rights. “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is a story linked to the struggle of whites and African Americans, to adjust to a changing worl,d and understand each other and the changes they would have to accept. This struggle obviously affected the writer and it remained evident in most of her work.
The story begins when Julian’s mother, a middle-aged white woman who was fearful of blacks, asked him to accompany her to town. Prior to departure, a discussion between the two characters leads to a clash of ideas about the social context. When they embark on the bus trip, Julian and his mother began to interact with people who think like her. With no blacks currently present on the bus, the group begins making derogatory comments about the “mixing of blacks with whites”. Julian disagrees with his mother’s beliefs seeks alternative ways to teach his mother a lesson. Meanwhile, on the bus a woman of color boards with her little son and takes a seat next to the protagonists, a fact which upset the mother further. Julian's mother gives a coin to the black child, assuming the family was poor and below her. The mother of the black boy was enraged and felt put down by the gesture and reacted by hitting Julian’s mother, resulting in her sudden death. The son, remorseful, ends up learning a bigger lesson himself, as the one he intended to teach his mother ended up backfiring on him.
The dark humor and violence that often characterized the author still remains in this story. The story’s essential conflict is racism and how two people within the same family have totally different