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raulbime 's review for:
Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories
by Flannery O'Connor
At the age of 5, Flannery O'Connor had taught her chicken to walk backwards, such a sight was this (and one can only imagine) that O'Connor and her chicken made it on the news and she once said that everything from there was anticlimactic. When I read about this, I surprisingly wasn't shocked, having read her stories, a young O'Connor teaching a chicken to walk backwards wasn't strange or fantastic because I had seen her work, when I read it, it felt very typical of Flannery O'Connor.
O'Connor is a genius. This book is quite the showing of elaborate craft. With each story, O'Connor delves into life, unsympathizing, with quite the bunch of flawed characters in each story.
Having been born and raised in Georgia, USA, pre-Civil Rights movement, it's not a surprise how much race and prejudice are factors in her stories. What surprised me is that the black characters in her stories aren't explored as the white characters, and they hardly speak unless forced to, let alone do we know of their thoughts and fears like the white characters. Flannery O'Connor once said about black souls, that "I can only see them from the outside. I wouldn't have the courage... to go inside their heads". Which explains why the black characters in her stories are only observed.
About every white character is racist and prejudiced. For instance in the story "Revelation", the main character Mrs Ruby Turpin believes herself in a better position because she is Christian, white and not poor white trash. A religious conflict stirring within her when she takes it as a message from God, a violent girl hurls a book at her and chocks and tells her, " Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog" instead of a " white trash" woman seated in the same room. And in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", Julian's mother, isn't be able to get in a bus by herself because she's afraid and uncomfortable sharing a bus with black people.
Besides this, Flannery O'Connor incredibly describes strained familial relationships, (fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, sister and brother). For the most part " intellectual" sons are embittered against their mother's for their racism and ignorance like in "Greenleaf", " Everything That Rises Must Converge" and "The Enduring Chill". Fathers ignoring their children and being unable to connect with them like in "The Lame Shall Enter First".
This book, finally, is one of the best collection of short stories I have ever read. All stories are ripped of idealism, but filled with such charge that I would sometimes walk around my room while reading.
O'Connor is a genius. This book is quite the showing of elaborate craft. With each story, O'Connor delves into life, unsympathizing, with quite the bunch of flawed characters in each story.
Having been born and raised in Georgia, USA, pre-Civil Rights movement, it's not a surprise how much race and prejudice are factors in her stories. What surprised me is that the black characters in her stories aren't explored as the white characters, and they hardly speak unless forced to, let alone do we know of their thoughts and fears like the white characters. Flannery O'Connor once said about black souls, that "I can only see them from the outside. I wouldn't have the courage... to go inside their heads". Which explains why the black characters in her stories are only observed.
About every white character is racist and prejudiced. For instance in the story "Revelation", the main character Mrs Ruby Turpin believes herself in a better position because she is Christian, white and not poor white trash. A religious conflict stirring within her when she takes it as a message from God, a violent girl hurls a book at her and chocks and tells her, " Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog" instead of a " white trash" woman seated in the same room. And in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", Julian's mother, isn't be able to get in a bus by herself because she's afraid and uncomfortable sharing a bus with black people.
Besides this, Flannery O'Connor incredibly describes strained familial relationships, (fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, sister and brother). For the most part " intellectual" sons are embittered against their mother's for their racism and ignorance like in "Greenleaf", " Everything That Rises Must Converge" and "The Enduring Chill". Fathers ignoring their children and being unable to connect with them like in "The Lame Shall Enter First".
This book, finally, is one of the best collection of short stories I have ever read. All stories are ripped of idealism, but filled with such charge that I would sometimes walk around my room while reading.