Dramatic Structure of Everything That Rises Must ConvergeDramatic structure is a very important aspect of short stories. Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge"ÃÂ, follows Aristotle's dramatic structure. According to Aristotle a short story has to contain a protagonist, who will create a conflict which would lead to a crisis, and a tragic hero. After the crisis the short story will go into a process of recognition and reversal where the protagonist/tragic hero will discover and/or solve the problem. "Everything That Rises Must Converge"ÃÂ, clearly follows this pattern.
The protagonist of "Everything That Rises Must Converge"ÃÂ is Julian. He is the character who pushes the action by creating tension that leads to a crisis. In the very beginning of the story Julian only hints at the eventual problem. In the first paragraph Julian tells that his mother would not go to her reducing classes alone since the busses had been integrated.
Book signing and Hamlet Au's interview with Julian...
The Hero Trilogy (Funker Vogt)
Holiday mom summer 2006 - Julian + my room, my bedTherefore Julian has to take her. He describes that "Every Wednesday night he braced himself and took her."ÃÂ(p.319). Even from this very short introduction the reader is able to deduce that Julian has some conflicts with his mother.
O'Connor also describes Julian's authoritative attitude toward his mother.
"æbut her eyes, sky-blue, were as innocent and untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten. Were it not that she was a widow who had struggled fiercely to feed and clothe and put him through school and who was supporting him still, "ÃÂuntil he got on his feet,"àshe might have been a little girl that he had to take to town. (p.319) As the story progresses O'Conner describes the conflict in more detail. The tension rises from Julian's detestation of his mother's racist attitudes and for her inability to...