"Everything That Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor

"He would have liked to teach her a lesson that would last her a while, but there seemed no way to continue the point. The Negro refused to come out from behind his paper"

 

Julian is a character of great pride, but not much spirit. His relationship with his mother has a fairly typical theme -- she has given him all he has and wants him to love her, while he just wants his own identity and freedom. At the start, it seems as though Julian is in the right here. He is described as intelligent and forward-thinking, embracing social change and bored with the frivolity of the world, which he primarily sees in his mother. And his mother is frivolous, and struggles more than we in retrospect feel she should with the concept of integration. She cares deeply about images

 

What Julian lacks is empathy. Racism is a terrible thing that should be done away with in all situations, and the mother is certainly racist. However, she grew up being told that this racism was right, and as such, she struggles to understand black people as a whole. And as for the obsession with looks, that's also a value system she was likely trained into. Society cares about looks, and she tries to work with society in order to achieve the best possible life for her and her son.

 

Early on, Julian appears to be in the right; he takes on the position of supporter to the oppressed. But all of his supposed attempts at openmindedness are really just thinly-veiled attempts to make his mother angry. He tries to use black people as a means to the end of upsetting his mother. As seen in the quote above, he takes a disconnected and unsympathetic stance on the black man's role in his mission. He assumes that all nearby black people should be ready and willing to play into his petty game with his mother. Sure, Julian has progressive ideas in that he doesn't think blacks and whites should be separated, but that doesn't mean he is any more genuinely welcoming than his mother is. He patronizes the black people; he tries to use them as pawns.

 

When it comes down to it, the main action here is the psychological battle between Julian and his mother. The black people, who Julian claims to be the focus of the dispute, are marginalized. Through that marginalization, we see the theme of the story: the mistreatment and judgmental perception of black people. In the end, Julian's mother collapses and suddenly he is affectionate toward her and afraid of losing her, which serves to illuminate the uselessness of his attempted rebellion and how disrespectful his perspective on black people really is.