Moments of Grace, Methods of Naturalism: The Religious Dynamics of Everything That Rises Must Converge Anonymous 11th Grade

Flannery O'Connor's short stories are notoriously filled with religious subtext and symbolism. In her final collection of stories, published after her death in 1964, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, much debate among critics and scholars about whether this story is O’Connor writing about naturalism of the civil rights time period or continuing her regular religious agenda just as she always did. Although Bryant N. Wyatt claims, “In the last-written and most realistic of her books, Everything That Rises Must Converge, the disjunction to Christianity is present, but not so pronounced, the supernatural impress not so stark, as in her earlier works,” this story can in fact be read as one of O’Connor’s most religious works, but naturalism still plays a major role. Where critics proclaim that O’Connor’s focus with this story is naturalistic with some hints of religion, due to her use of the clashing points of view between Julian and his mother about the Civil Rights movement, O’Connor’s intention was to write a story filled with religious subtext and symbolism with moments of naturalism.

O'Connor's literary style is often categorized as “Southern Gothic”, a style of literature that has flawed and complicated characters in...