The central conflict of Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge" is located in the tension between Julian, a frustrated intellectual, and his mother, a bigoted incarnation of Old South values. The story, which is told in the limited omniscient point-of-view, identifies Julian as a weak young man whose goal of writing has been ironically displaced by selling typewriters; he is static, unproductive, ostensibly self-aware, and he knows that there is "of course no future ahead of him." (491) He is heavily invested in a self-perception that insists he has cut himself off from the prejudice and banal values of his mother: he thinks that he has "cut himself emotionally free of her... he [is] not dominated by his mother." (492)
The reader, however, comes to just the opposite conclusion. Julian, an adult, lives with his mother; he allows himself to be guilted into a host of small annoying favors, like the weekly Wednesday night escort to the Y. (485) Even in his imagination, when he is dreaming about living as a monied and competent professional, he defers to her: "'Someday I'll start making money,' Julian said gloomily--he knew he never would--'and you can have one of those jokes [hats] whenever you take the fit.'"(486) Moreover, on the bus when Julian contemplates a small act of rebellion (letting his mother get off at her stop alone), he helplessly admits to himself that he will return to get her. (493)
The theme of domination is consistently imaged in terms of rising, swelling, and expanding. The first appearance of Julian's mother describes her atrocious hat, which looks "like a cushion with the stuffing out." (485) This same image, a bursting cushion, is repeated verbatim to describe the (same) hat of the "sullen-looking colored woman" who functions as a twin to Julian's mother and who has a "bulging figure," "overflowing" feet, and a "bulging" pocketbook. (495) Apartment buildings are "rising" (499); t...