The desegregation of buses and the general rise of the Negro seem to her so much chaos, a chaos in which the old and the young, the present and the past, must violently collide.
Blacks encroaching upon the power structure which is integral to her behavior have forced her to either reassess her behavior, or substantiate it. She is an old woman, whose meaning to life is reliant upon segregation, and she will, in every case, opt for the latter, In her discourse with her son, Julian, she proudly refers to a great-grandfather who was a slave owner, the tragedy of "half-whites", and, as proof for not riding integrated buses alone, a large Black passenger sitting adjacent to her, reading a newspaper. Her manipulative council and rhetoric of self-identity offers her son no valuable insight. Although good-intentioned, her concepts are either too lofty or ambiguous to utilize. Kathleen Feeley wrote that "eventually the mother's 'culture of the heart' fails because it is unreal" , and her inability to advise Julian clearly is indicative of this. Julian does not like his mother. To him, she is an embarrassment, a burden, and backward. He has learned to identify racism, and has learned to argue against it, However, when his mother is the perpetrator, the issue becomes wrapped around the hostility he feels for her. For example, he resents her methods of motherhood, or perhaps her headstrong commitment to her unwitting ignorance. Most likely, when taking the issue into account, he feels the most anger towards her for raising him as a racist, and now, despite an education that presumes the opposite, he finds that he remains racist. Instead of addressing these problems, he seeks to belittle her, When the large Negro woman first enters the story, he immediately wished that she sit beside his mother, in order to disturb her. Yet "to his annoyance, she squeezed herself into [the seat next to his]". His lack of insight regarding their relationship is revealed when he has fantasies of presenting his mother with a Black acquaintance: either a business associate, a lover, or even the doctor whom he could hire to heal her. When he asks the man with the newspaper for a light (with neither cigarettes nor the desire to smoke), he embarrasses himself solely to confound her. He remains racist not because it was ingrained into him by his mother, but because, ironically, he continues to exploit Negroes for the sole purpose of shocking his mdther out of her racism. "Julian's 'culture of the mind' fails because it does not touch his whole being". A college graduate, he still lives at home, with only the vaguest notion of a means to independence or a career. Julian has withdrawn from society. Hence, his ethical structures pertaining to equality are not put to the test among society, the one place where such structures belong. Mrs. Chestny and Julian are "out of touch with social reality".
Social reality comes as a fatal blow to Mrs. Chestney when she attempts, again with good intentions, to show goodwill by offering a penny to a Negro woman's child. The woman does not wish to be controlled in any way, including the obligations of charity, and the magnitude of her reaction is enough to knock Mrs. Chestney to the ground and out of her senses. "The black woman has reached a sudden, cataclysmic maturity that fulfills Julian's fantasies of revolt". Julian takes the opportunity to scold. "You needn't react as if the world had come to an end" he says, when:
"Her fantasy world collapses, her sense of what the world ought to be like... is dealt so deadly a blow that she falls to the sidewalk and dies. Julian is unaware of her imminent death, and continues a lecture on ethics until his mother ironically says, "Tell Caroline to come get me". She vehemently discredits Blacks and is now yearning for a "darky" nurse's care. Only then does Julian react to the circumstances, in a panic. He helplessly watches his mother die, and then realizes how dependent on her he truly is, As the Old South dies, the New South emerges. The descendant cannot sever the tie to its predecessor, nor ignore its effect on the next generation. As a society, our evolution to a point without racism may be a long process.
New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972.
Hendin, Josephine. The World of Flannery O'Connor. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1970.
O'Connor, Flannery. Everything That Rises Must Converge. New York: The Noonday Press, 1956,
Stephens, Martha. The Question of Flannery O'Connor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.