Everything That Rises Must Converge

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Everything That Rises Must Converge
EverythingThatRises.JPG
First edition cover
Author Flannery O'Connor
LanguageEnglish
Genre Short stories
Publisher Farrar Straus Giroux
Publication date
January 1965
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hard & paperback)
Pages269 pp
ISBN 0-374-15012-5

Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of short stories written by Flannery O'Connor during the final decade of her life. The collection's eponymous story derives its name from the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. [1] [2] The collection was published posthumously in 1965 and contains an introduction by Robert Fitzgerald. Of the volume's nine stories, seven had been printed in magazines or literary journals prior to being collected, including three that won O. Henry Awards: "Greenleaf" (1957), "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1963), and "Revelation" (1965). "Judgment Day" is a dramatically reworked version of "The Geranium", which was one of O'Connor's earliest publications and appeared in her graduate thesis at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. "Parker's Back", the collection's only completely new story, was a last-minute addition.

Contents

Short story contents

"Everything That Rises Must Converge"

The short story that lends its name to the 1965 short story collection was first published in the 1961 issue of New World Writing . The story won O'Connor her second O. Henry Award in 1963. The story's protagonist is a recent college graduate and aspiring writer named Julian who lives with his mother in an unnamed Southern city. Julian's mother attends a weekly exercise session at the local YMCA but is wary of riding the bus by herself after the recent racial integration of the city's transportation system. Though he despises his mother's racism, snobbery and anti-intellectualism, Julian reluctantly escorts her on the bus out of a sense of filial duty. One night, after his mother loudly complains to the other white passengers about the state of affairs under integration, Julian makes a point of sitting next to a black man on the bus, who ignores him in spite of Julian's attempt to be friendly. Soon a black woman and her young son named Carver board as well. Julian's mother shows an affection for Carver in spite of Carver’s mother's disapproval and gives him a penny when they all disembark at the same station, causing Carver's mother to assault her on the sidewalk. Julian is unsympathetic at first and tells his mother that she has received what she deserved, but he soon realizes the extent to which his mother has been affected by the incident, and desperately runs to get help.

The title "Everything That Rises Must Converge" refers to (without endorsing) a work by the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin titled the "Omega Point": [3] "Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge." [4]

In the fifth season Lost episode, "The Incident", Jacob reads Everything That Rises Must Converge while waiting for John Locke to fall from a window. [5]

The band Shriekback put out a song by this title in 1985.

The Danish dark rock band Sort Sol ("Black Sun" in Danish) released an album called "Everything that rises... must converge!" in 1987. The album was initially intended to be called The Violent Bear It Away.

The music duo The Handsome Family released a song by this title in 1995.

A song by Moby is named “Everything That Rises.”

The band A Hope for Home put out a song by this title in 2011.

The band Elephant Tree (band) included the title in the lyrics for their song 'Bird'

In the Æon Flux episode "Chronophasia", a character speaks the title of the story.

Sufjan Stevens has a track on his 2023 album Javelin called "Everything That Rises" and he sings "Everything That Rises Must Converge."

The inter-dimensional indie synthpop duo Battery Operated Orchestra have a track with this title on their 2023 album "Compulsory Games"

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Teilhard de Chardin</span> French philosopher and Jesuit priest (1881–1955)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit, Catholic priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher, and teacher. He was Darwinian and progressive in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books. His mainstream scientific achievements included taking part in the discovery of Peking Man. His more speculative ideas, sometimes criticized as pseudoscientific, have included a vitalist conception of the Omega Point. Along with Vladimir Vernadsky, they also contributed to the development of the concept of a noosphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flannery O'Connor</span> American writer (1925–1964)

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.

The Omega Point is a theorized future event in which the entirety of the universe spirals toward a final point of unification. The term was invented by the French Jesuit Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is "God from God", "Light from Light", "True God from True God", and "through him all things were made". In the Book of Revelation, Christ describes himself three times as "the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end". Several decades after Teilhard's death, the idea of the Omega Point was expanded upon in the writings of John David Garcia (1971), Paolo Soleri (1981), Frank Tipler (1994), and David Deutsch (1997).

<i>Oil and Gold</i> 1985 studio album by Shriekback

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Revelation (short story)</span> Short story by Flannery OConnor

"Revelation" is a Southern Gothic short story by author Flannery O'Connor about the delivery and effect of a revelation to a sinfully proud, self-righteous, middle-aged, middle class, rural, white Southern woman that her confidence in her own Christian salvation is an error. The protagonist receives divine grace by accepting God's judgment that she is unfit for salvation, by learning that the prospect for her eventual redemption improves after she receives a vision of Particular Judgment, where she observes the souls of people she detests are the first to ascend to Heaven and those of people like herself who "always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right" are last to ascend and experience purgation by fire on the way up.

<i>Everything That Rises Must Converge</i> (album) 1987 studio album by Sort Sol

Everything That Rises...Must Converge! is the fourth album by the Danish rock act Sort Sol and the second after renaming of the band.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A Good Man Is Hard to Find (short story)</span> Short story by Flannery OConnor

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is a Southern gothic short story first published in 1953 by author Flannery O'Connor who, in her own words, described it as "the story of a family of six which, on its way driving to Florida [from Georgia], is slaughtered by an escaped convict who calls himself the Misfit".

Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor, and the title of a short story in that collection. The phrase comes from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the Omega Point.

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The bibliography of Flannery O'Connor includes two novels, more than thirty short stories, and several collections.

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<i>The Complete Stories</i> (OConnor) 1971 short story collection by Flannery OConnor

The Complete Stories is a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor. It was published in 1971 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It comprises all the stories in A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge plus several previously unavailable stories.

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"Judgement Day" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It was published in 1965 in her short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge. O'Connor finished the collection during her final battle with lupus. She died in 1964, just before her final book was published. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work. "Judgement Day" contains many similarities to one of O'Connor's earliest short stories, "The Geranium."

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parker's Back</span> Short story by Flannery OConnor

"Parker's Back" is a Southern gothic short story by American author Flannery O'Connor about the efforts of a worldly tattooed Southern man to demonstrate his love for a fundamentalist Christian woman whom he courts and marries but never understands why he stays with her. After a self-indulgent, disordered, and carefree life, the story's protagonist accepts God's grace and fulfills the meaning of his given name, Obadiah, but his wife with her Old Testament beliefs rejects grace in the form of Jesus Christ tattooed on her husband's back. The work was published in 1965, in her final short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge. André Bleikasten, a scholar who studied Southern American writers and their works, said "'Parker's Back' belongs with O'Connor's most explicitly religious stories" as well as “one of her most enigmatic and gripping texts”.

"The Lame Shall Enter First" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It appeared first in The Sewanee Review in 1962 and was published in 1965 in her short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge. O'Connor finished the collection during her final battle with lupus. She died in 1964, just before her final book was published. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work.

"Greenleaf" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor published in 1956 in The Kenyon Review, and later appeared in her short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge that was published in 1965 after her death in August 1964. The work garnered the author's first O. Henry Award first prize in 1957.

"A View of the Woods" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It was completed in the fall of 1956 and was first published in the Fall 1957 issue of Partisan Review. It was later republished in The Best American Short Stories of 1958, and again in 1965, in O'Connor's short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge. O'Connor had first submitted it to Harper's Bazaar, although she correctly expected that the story was "a little grim" for the Harper's readership and would be rejected. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work; "A View of the Woods" contains numerous references to the Christian tradition. It explores the ideas of modernism and materialism pitted against salvation.

"The Comforts of Home" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It was written in 1960 and published in 1965 in her short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work.

"The Enduring Chill" is a short story by Flannery O'Connor. It was written in 1958 and published in 1965 in her short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge.

References

  1. Whitt, Margaret Earley (August 1, 1997). Understanding Flannery O'Connor. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN   1-57003-225-4.
  2. Chardin, Pierre Teilhard De (1969). Building the Earth and The Psychological Conditions of Human Unification. Avon (Discus Edition). p. 11.
  3. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomenon of Man.
  4. Analysis of Everything That Rises Must Converge Archived February 4, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  5. Poniewozik, James (May 14, 2009). "Lostwatch: Everything That Rises Must Converge. Eventually. Right?". Time .