Symbolism and Charity in Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises"
This paper examines four critical perspectives on Flannery O'Connor's short story "Everything That Rises Must Converge," focusing on the story's central symbols of the penny, the city lights, and the character of Julian. The paper compares analyses by Paul Elie, David Allen White, John F. McCarthy, and O'Connor herself — drawing on her personal correspondence — to argue that White's interpretation most closely aligns with O'Connor's stated intentions. Rather than a story primarily about race, O'Connor's work is shown to be a deeply moral exploration of intellectual pride, the absence of charity, and the spiritual emptiness of modern life.
- Introduction: Four Critics and One Story: Four critics and their competing readings introduced
- O'Connor's Own Intentions: O'Connor's letters reveal her moral and spiritual aims
- Paul Elie's Surface-Level Reading: Elie focuses on race and Southern social change
- David Allen White on Intellectual Pride and Symbolism: White reads Julian's pride and charity symbolism deeply
- McCarthy's View of Julian as a Symbol of Pride: McCarthy sees Julian's education as hollow and prideful
- The Penny, the City Lights, and the Rejection of Charity: Key symbols analyzed as rejections of grace and charity
- Conclusion: White's Analysis Most Closely Reflects O'Connor's Vision: White best captures O'Connor's deeper spiritual purpose
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper establishes a clear argumentative thesis early — that White's analysis most closely matches O'Connor's own stated intentions — and returns to it consistently throughout.
- It uses O'Connor's personal correspondence as primary evidence, giving the argument an authoritative anchor that the other critics are measured against.
- The comparative structure is well-balanced: each critic receives substantive treatment before the paper draws distinctions between surface-level and deeper readings.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper models source triangulation effectively: it sets up a hierarchy of evidence (the author's own letters, then two aligned critics, then a dissenting critic) and uses that hierarchy to adjudicate between competing interpretations. By invoking O'Connor's correspondence as a kind of authorial standard, the writer avoids purely subjective claims about which reading is "best" and instead grounds the argument in verifiable intent.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis-driven introduction that names all four critics and previews the argument. It then moves through O'Connor's stated intentions, Elie's more limited reading, and the deeper analyses of White and McCarthy. The final two body paragraphs synthesize the critics' differences before the conclusion reinforces the thesis. The annotated Works Cited section adds useful context, making sources transparent for readers unfamiliar with the secondary literature.
Introduction: Four Critics and One Story
Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge" is a short story filled with symbols of emptiness and darkness. Paul Elie observes that "the symbolism is 'the coin of the realm, which has the face worn off of it'" (323). David Allen White suggests that the story's theme is concerned with intellectual pride and that the penny serves as a symbol of charity — now nowhere to be found in the city, a point reflected in the darkness of the buildings where no lights shine (and to which Julian turns hopelessly for help at the end of the story). John F. McCarthy views Julian as a character who is more or less a symbol of arrogance (1144). O'Connor herself viewed her creation as one predominantly concerned with charity and the lack thereof — symbolized by the dark "world of guilt and sorrow." This paper analyzes the claims of these four perspectives and argues that David Allen White's bears the most resemblance to O'Connor's own stated objective, which she reveals in her correspondence from the same time period.
O'Connor's Own Intentions
At about the same time O'Connor had finished writing "Everything That Rises," she wrote to friends stating that she hoped her stories could inspire readers toward charity first and foremost: "I think if the novel is to give us virtue the selection of hope and courage is rather arbitrary — why not charity, peace, patience, joy, benignity, long-suffering and fear of the Lord? Or faith?" (O'Connor 438). If one may call O'Connor a critic of her own work — and there is no reason why one may not — then the critics are, to a large extent, all in agreement that "Everything That Rises" is only superficially a story about race and prejudice.
As she states elsewhere in her correspondence: "Everything That Rises Must Converge…is a physical proposition that I found in [the writings of] Pere Teilhard [de Chardin] and am applying to a certain situation in the Southern states and indeed in all the world" (438). Here, O'Connor reveals a much wider intention than Paul Elie is willing to allow: she sets herself up as a moralist for all humanity and illustrates the effects of pride through the rising of the social classes. Flannery O'Connor was a devout Catholic, and her moral vision consistently extended beyond the regional to the universal.
Paul Elie's Surface-Level Reading
Paul Elie's critique of the story is perhaps the most superficial, since he dwells mostly on the exteriors of the tale: the difficult race problem in the South, and the difficulty that both Julian and his mother face in dealing with the rising African American class. For Elie, the penny that Julian's mother gives to the little boy on the bus represents not so much a reflection of her innocence and charity — as David Allen White argues — but merely a reflection of the loss of a national or Southern character, due to the sudden change in class structure. However, while contemporary issues were certainly of interest to O'Connor, her stories transcend contemporary concerns to focus on deeper problems and afflictions within the human soul itself.
David Allen White on Intellectual Pride and Symbolism
David Allen White comments at length on the story's preoccupation with intellectual pride. He notes how Julian has gone off to college and returned home a bitter and unhappy young man, antagonistic toward his mother, who — in her simplicity — retains an old Southern worldview and refuses to adopt the modern progressive creed. White also observes that Julian's mother may consider race, but she is no racist: after all, her nurse growing up was a woman named Caroline, and it is Caroline's name she calls as she lies dying on the sidewalk. She gives a penny to the little boy out of a genuine desire to see him happy.
It is the boy's mother who is disturbed by the thought of a white woman offering charity to her son. She is filled with as much pride as Julian — who also sees race before he sees humanity — and neither has time or patience for Julian's mother. Both look on her gesture with spite, offended that she should see herself as being in a position of generosity or superiority. The story's central conflict thus operates on a spiritual level, not merely a social one.
Conclusion: White's Analysis Most Closely Reflects O'Connor's Vision
David Allen White provides the most engaging analysis of symbolism in O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge" by focusing on the penny as a symbol of charity, and on Julian and the city as symbols of a lack of charity and grace. McCarthy's analysis agrees with White's and focuses on Julian as a symbol of pride. Elie, however, views the tensions in the story mainly on a surface and literal level and does not delve deeply enough into the mysteries that O'Connor herself states she is trying to explore. O'Connor's collected letters make clear that her ambitions were moral and spiritual in scope, and White's reading honors that intention most fully.
Works Cited
Elie, Paul. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print. This book compares the lives of four Southern writers. Its assessment of O'Connor and her works is at times simplistic, but often informative despite a tendency toward being overly critical. Its analysis of "Everything That Rises" is helpful in illustrating O'Connor's own views on race relations.
McCarthy, John F. "Human Intelligence vs. Divine Truth: The Intellectual in Flannery O'Connor's Works." The English Journal, Vol. 55, No. 9 (Dec., 1966), pp. 1143–1148. Print. This essay analyzes several stories by O'Connor. Its focus on "Everything That Rises" shows a direct connection to O'Connor's own thoughts on the story and reveals McCarthy as a critic who has attempted to penetrate the story's surface.
O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979. Print. This collection of O'Connor's correspondence throughout her career is very revealing of her own thoughts concerning her work. She shows in her letters that "Everything That Rises" is more than just a story about race relations, and is more symbolic of modern humanity's lack of grace and charity.
White, David Allen. "Wise Blood and Short Stories." Audio Cassette. MN: St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, 1996. This lecture, given and recorded at a seminary, provides superb analysis of O'Connor's short story. White views O'Connor's works from her own traditional Catholic viewpoint and thus reads the symbols therein as aspects of a spiritual journey and the battle of the soul between Heaven and Hell.
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