SOURCE: "On Flannery O'Connor's 'Everything That Rises Must Converge,'" in Critique, Vol. XIII, No. 2, 1971, pp. 15-29.

In the following essay, Montgomery refers to a superficial analysis of O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," and proceeds to analyze the story on a deeper level.

Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge" first appeared in New World Writing Number 17, in 1961, from which it was selected for inclusion in both Best American Short Stories of 1962 and Prize Stories of 1963: the O. Henry Awards. It appeared posthumously, as the title story of the final collection of her fiction, in 1965. It has, in consequence, had special attention called to it over a period of years and has received critical, if sometimes puzzled, readings at a number of hands. Predictably, much (though not all) of that attention has centered upon the topical materials it uses, the "racial" problem which seems the focus of...