Everything That Rises Must Converge Essay | Critical Essay #6

Everything That Rises Must Converge Critical Essay #6

In the essay below, Maida discusses Julian's experience of convergence, comparing and contrasting O'Connor's use of the concept with Teilhard de Chardin's philosophy.

Flannery O'Connor's fiction continues to provoke interest and critical analysis. The title story of her posthumous collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge, has been among those stories that have received attention lately. But no one has yet examined the implications of the title. Robert Fitzgerald tells us [in his introduction to the collection] that Miss O'Connor got the idea for the title when she read Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man in 1961.

Typical of an O'Connor work, this story has meaning on several levels; especially, the allusion to Chardin's theory of "convergence" offers an enriching dimension to the story. Essentially, it describes an experience of a mother and son that changes the course of their lives. Measured against the background...
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