[In the following essay, Desmond discusses the influence of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's ideas about human history and redemption on O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge."]

This vision of human history developed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin—a synthesis of biological and psychological evolution and the Christian conception of historical redemption—is one which strongly appealed to Flannery O'Connor and influenced much of her later work. In The Phenomenon of Man Teilhard describes the process of evolution as one which follows a law of increased complexification and convergence toward greater consciousness as the inevitable outcome of the evolutionary process. For Teilhard, the drive toward synthesis is caused by the energy of union—love—and he warned strongly against isolation or refusal of reconciliation in any form, racial or individual. Teilhard sees the energy of union as an Omega point which is the source and object of love, and to the theist Omega is God. The central position of Christianity in this perspective, with its beliefs in a personal God and its own universality, is that the actuality of Omega is achieved through Christ's Incarnation, uniting Himself organically with human history, with all matter and all psychism. Attempts at isolation from corporate human history—from the universal bond of fallen yet redeemed mankind—are in fact attempts to deny the concrete reality of suffering, grace, and redemptive love in favor of a specious "innocence" that projects one outside or above the redemptive process. Such a stance is, of course, the classic one of pride.

In a letter to this writer in December 1963, Miss O'Connor acknowledged the influence of Chardin and remarked that "what he attempted appeals to my imagination." While Miss O'Connor could agree with Teilhard's vision of history and its apotheosis in Christ, she could not, as she often said, let her Christian beliefs distort what she actually saw going on in the world around her. And what she actually saw were not only prideful refusals of redemptive grace on the part of man, but the more fundamental refusal to admit any need for redemption. Convergence means the universal drive toward spiritual union amog men, through love. However, Miss O'Connor shows this drive as one which is everywhere resisted, by characters who choose various forms of isolation and immunity—such as retreat into abstract intellectualism or into a romanticized past—to escape the demands of concrete union and growth. For redemption includes the total, corporate community of humankind, and through pride these characters implicitly and explicitly try to deny their place in this process. Consequently, they resist "convergence," and because of this the initial action which must occur is the destruction of their false identities and false, detached "place" of immunity. Because of their hardened isolation, it takes an apocalyptic-like violence to penetrate their shell, but this violent encounter can, though not necessarily, work mysteriously to open the character to see and accept his true place and identity in redemption history. Some characters retreat from this terrible knowledge, but even these are chastened so that they cannot return to their former "innocent" state. Such knowledge is the purpose of the violent convergence in "Everything That Rises Must Converge," where Miss O'Connor dramatized particular cases of modern pride typologically as part of her vision of history.

In the story the violent convergence occurs between a stout Negro woman and an aristocratically inclined white woman, whose son Julian witnesses the impact. The encounter between the two women dramatizes the violent forces which erupt in a clash whose racial manifestations are the terms of deeper spiritual conflict. Both women, as well as Julian, are guilty of a denial of love and charity because of their prideful isolation.

The relationship between Julian and his mother is the central focus throughout the story, and the irony of their relationship derives from the fact that while she is a product of the now-faded aristocratic past, Julian's mother has adapted somewhat to their present "reduced" condition. It is Julian's indulgence of her as a figure from the past, made in his own image, that is as much responsible for her gesture of condescension toward the Negroes as her own pride. A pseudo-intellectual, Julian espouses the gospel of liberalism—toleration of all—but in truth his liberalism is only a reactionary response to his own ambivalent feelings toward his family history. He has created his own idealized view of this past and sustains it through the attachment to his mother, but his real dependence upon her is hidden from his eyes by the blinder he wears—an apparent hatred of what she represents. Thus Julian's so-called progressivism, based upon intellectual and cultural elitism (he wishes to associate with intelligent, liberal Negroes) rather than a recognition of spiritual equality, is specious and in fact much akin to his mother's own aristocratic pretensions. He uses his liberalism simply as a means of revenge against a past he both falsely idealizes and nostalgically admires. Both mother and son are dissociated from reality, from history, and they must be returned to the real at a terrible cost.

The weekly trips made by Julian's mother to the YWCA "Reducing Class," a comic symbol of both their reduced circumstances (she was formerly a "Godhigh") and the "Fall" from pride which awaits her, underscore the fact that she is slightly more adaptable to present realities than her son wishes to believe. Yet she is also possessed of an exalting pride. What distinguishes her from "common" humanity is the ridiculous purple and green hat she wears, and though she thinks the hat too expensive and wants to return it, it is Julian, significantly, who insists that she keep it. Thus her son fosters the indulgent pride whereby she assumes an aristocratic stance above common humanity, epitomized in the salesgirl's remark, "with that hat, you won't meet yourself coming and going." Nevertheless, she is willing to live in the decayed neighborhood, whereas Julian, a typewriter salesman with literary ambitions, dreams of isolating himself from society in a place "three miles" from any neighbors.

Possessed of a sense of identity that her son lacks, Julian's mother nevertheless suffers a moral blindness manifested in her nostalgic affection for the past. To her, the world is in "a mess," though she still can appear gracious to other women in the reducing class while convinced of her superiority. Julian's belief that she is "out of touch" with the present is accurate; yet ironically it is through his belief in her as a representative of the past that he sustains his own false identity—"innocently" detached from reality and aristocratically superior in his condemnation of her limitations. Her view of equality and social evolution through integration—convergence and reconciliation—is one of retrenchment and moral isolation. "It's simply not realistic. They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence." Sentimentally, she recalls her visits to the Godhigh plantation before its decline. Observing this, Julian concludes that his mother's adaptability to present circumstances is simply due to her insensitivity; yet the real basis of his irritation with her is the fact that in her adaptability she does not conform to the idealized image of her he uses to support his own retreat from the real present. When she insists that her family retained self-respect in spite of reduced circumstances, Julian's own nostalgia is revealed.

"Doubtless that decayed mansion reminded them," Julian muttered. He never spoke of it without contempt or thought of it without longing. He had seen it once when he was a child before it had been sold. The double stairways had rotted and been torn down. Negroes were living in it. But it remained in his mind as his mother had known it. It appeared in his dreams regularly. He would stand on the wide porch, listening to the rustle of oak leaves, then wander through the high-ceilinged hall into the parlor that opened onto it and gaze at the worn rugs and faded draperies. It occurred to him that it was he, not she, who could have appreciated it.

After they have boarded the bus together, Julian retreats into a "mental bubble" while his mother discusses the race question with two other women passengers. From his detached perspective, ironically. Julian sees his mother as living in a "fantasy world," while she believes accurately that her son is inexperienced in the "real world." As a further irony, Julian sees himself as liberated from her, when in fact he is vitally dependent upon her as the scapegoat for his own intellectual and moral self-righteousness. When a sophisticated Negro passenger boards the bus, Julian's postured "toleration" is revealed when he unsuccessfully tries to engage the Negro in conversation by borrowing matches, though a NO SMOKING sign is posted clearly. When the Negro isolates himself behind a newspaper, Julian recalls his other attempts to become acquainted with "the better types" and imagines the revenge he could perpetrate against his mother's bigotry by bringing a Negro woman home as his fiancee. His "fantasy" ends when the large, fierce-looking Negro woman boards the bus with the child, Carver, and the stage is set for the violent convergence and Julian's shattering epiphany.

The bond between Julian's mother and the Negro woman, both isolated and proud, is of course symbolized by the identical hats which the women wear. Furthermore the fact that the Negro child sits with Julian's mother and the woman next to Julian, separated by the aisle, signifies their moral kinship and the incipient theme of convergence. Recognizing the equality implied by their similar hats, Julian's mother appears "as if sickened at some awful confrontation," while her son blindly gloats at her humiliation. Nevertheless, she suppresses her indignation by assuming a comical attitude toward the likeness, as if "a monkey" were wearing the hat. The real link between the two women is established through the child Carver—whose name suggests the difficult process by which suffering is transformed through Christ-like love—and both women fail in this opportunity provided by his presence to transcend intolerance. Julian's mother sees the child as "cute" and smiles at him patronizingly, anticipating her disastrous gesture of condescension later when she offers Carver a penny. The Negro woman, on the other hand, pulls him across the aisle to her as if "snatching him from contagion," and threatens to "knock the living Jesus" out of him if he doesn't behave. The two women are identical in their blind moral isolation, and their encounter erupts inevitably into violence when Julian's mother's offer of money is answered by the Negro woman's blow.

For Julian, the defeat of his mother is a momentary triumph, a confirmation of his self-righteousness and intellectual "hatred" of her values. Yet while the effect of the violent convergence upon his mother is a fatal heart attack on the way "home"—she is retreating into the romanticized past as she dies, calling for her childhood Negro maid—her death also reveals Julian's shallowness and "innocent" detachment from the real. Ironically, his mother now becomes "the past" he has not only seen her as representing but from which he has created his own reproachless, false progressivism; and the false identity this provided him is suddenly destroyed by her death. He must face the "void" alone. His perversion of her real values and his own prideful isolation have fostered a moral adolescence in which he has had no mature spiritual identity, and now alone, "the tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow."

The death of his mother brings Julian for the first time face to face with the reality of history—the "world of guilt and sorrow"—and unprepared in his innocence, he wishes to retreat from this terrible knowledge. The god he has served has been the idolatrous one of self, his gospel one of social progress through strictly human means, which Miss O'Connor found woefully inadequate to overcome the real human condition of the Fall. Only Redemption through Christ could transform the "world of guilt and sorrow" and cause man's humble acceptance of his true place in the slow working out of the redemptive plan through the wounds of history and man's acceptance of the healing grace that can truly unite mankind.