Blog #4- Short Stories Galore

In my opinion, the most complex short story that I read was Everything that Rises Must Converge. I felt that the relationship between the son and mother, and the mother's feelings of racism mixed together to form a pretty complex short story. It was hard for me to really interpret effectively the son's hatred toward his mother, and the mother's extreme hatred toward things that are different, like an opposite race. Also, with the way that the mother just dies of shock at the end of the novel, I felt that it really came out of nowhere. That was another point of the story that was tough to interpret for me because although she might have been a mean woman for so much of her life, she had finally seemed to see the light and then her life is taken from her. A deceptively simple aspect of the story for me was the black boy's mom's reaction to the mother in the story when the mother attempts to give the black boy a nickle. I understand that during this time period, black families had to constantly have their guards up, and in many ways, to receive money from a race that oppresses you would be quite humiliating. So, that part especially I could understand. The title of this story goes along with most of the works by the author, Flannery O'Connor in the sense that it conveys her religious beliefs. The title portray her belief that society as a whole has a sinful nature that at many times goes unnoticed completely. These sinful, or malignant acts will eventually catch up to society and this culmination or explosion really is shown through the title of O'Connor's short story and the ending of the story.

I viewed the website: http://www.enotes.com/everything-rises when looking for more information on O'Connor's feelings about the term/title Everything that Rises Must Converge.