Journal 2

Although both of these stories take place in roughly the same time period (around the presidency of JFK when segregation was waning), they present two radically different perspectives, that in an odd way, also share some essential similarities. The protagonist in Flannery O’Conner’s short story “Everything that Rises Must Converge” is a young, college educated boy named Julian who is forced to escort his mother on the bus to her exercise class. Julian is contemptuous of his mother who he sees as bigoted, small-minded, delusional, etc. Julian considers himself to be the exact opposite of his mother, “in spite of growing up dominated by a small mind [presumably, his mothers] he had ended up with a large one; in spite of all her foolish views, he was free of prejudice and unafraid to face facts” (5). Although his mother continues to express her bigoted views and assert her superiority over black people, Julian in an odd way is just as aware of race and uses his “large” mind to place himself above his mother and the other unenlightened ones. For all Julian’s progressive sentiments, he is still a product of a bigoted south and is constantly talking of befriending black people to “show his mother.” Julian’s attempt to interact with black people is artificial and nearly always a failure. When he asks a black man on the bus for a light, he receives the matches but then realizes that it is forbidden to smoke on the bus and that he doesn’t even have cigarettes on him. Julian’s intentions are generally good, but they are ill conceived and in themselves bigoted. By the end of the story, after being stressed out by her son the whole bus trip and shocked by the black mother’s aggressive reaction to her giving the black boy a condescending penny, the mother collapses on the street. It is unclear how sick the woman is, but is a possibility that the experience has killed her.

The second short story, “Where is the Voice Coming From” by Eudora Welty is told from the first person perspective on a racist southerner who is telling the story of his murder of a prominent black column writer. The narrator in this story is the exact opposite of the characters in O’Conner’s story: the narrator remorselessly and unapologetically murdered a black man while I get the impression that although she is deeply misguided, Julian’s mother has good intentions and Julian sets himself in contrast to both types of people (violent racists and sentimental old women with racist views). The narrator in Welty’s story does not believe he has sinned, rather he is under the impression that he is doing a service to his community by killing the black man and expresses concern that perhaps he should have done better to wait until more prominent black people were in the area so that he could make a bigger impact. After having killed the black man, he described himself as “on top of the world myself. For once” (Welty 2). Although this man is expressing his politics through this violent crime, he is also in a way, expressing his personal emotions. The narrator keeps talking about the NAACP an Governor Barnett, but he sees it as the individuals job to take control: “Ain’t it about time us taxpayers starts to calling the moves?” (Welty 5).

Although in the end both Julian (maybe) and Welty’s narrator are involved in the death of someone who holds views conflicting with their own. Both narrators believe that they are on the moral and political right of things and that they are bettering society through the lessons they are teaching. Of course, it is unfair to align Julian too closely with a murderer. After all, Julian is struggling to overcome the prejudices of his society (even if he kind of obliviously reflects them). Racism and murder are obviously bad things, but these two short stories illustrate how many different perspectives from across the spectrum share essential similarities. The bigot is not so distantly related to the moral individual and the murderer is not completely alien to the unintentional contributor to the death of another.