During the time of the end of segregation everyone had mixed feelings on the way society was going to change, especially in the south. It does not matter if you were for integration or against it you felt in more ways than one that things were going to change. The story "Every Thing That Rises Must Converge" an older mother and a post college son have a have a discussion about how society now and how society then compares and contrasts. This story does an excellent job of showing how integration affected all southerners whether they are for or against integration; it does this by giving us two characters that perceive the current society, these characters bigot or not still have no understanding of how to integrate themselves in to this new society and that is evident throughout the story.

Because of integration the Mother is put in to a situation where she must interact with people she believes is below her. This is apparent in the beginning of the story when the whole setting is defined by her and her son riding on the bus and the book gives the two reasons being "since they had been integrated, and because the reducing class was one of her few pleasures" (O'Connor 235). Anyone could take this at face value and say that she does not like riding the bus because of the integration. But through further observation of the quote one could see that she likes riding the bus, while not alone, because she enjoys seeing the different types of people boarding the bus. That tells us that she is not a violent or aggressive person of prejudice but just believes that things were better before which is never really explored in other texts. This part of the story gives us an understanding of why the son's distain for his mother's attitude is there. Thinking of the Mother's audited could make one think of the state of the South and whether it was the only culprit of this way of thinking. Even though the South was the place of slavery it is a fact that the north had its instances of racism. This would make most think that even though the late 1900's was a time of many racial tensions, some of it was unjust. 

Throughout the story there are examples of condescending and outright awkward encounters. A perfect example would be the encounter with the African American mother toward the end of the bus ride. The book points out how similar the two ladies seem to be physically, but further inspection leads to that being the only thing similar. Through the couple senseless interactions from the Julian's Mother to the little boy the reader and Julian understand that the African American woman does not want anything to do with Julian's Mother. But through the annoyances of her son spurred by Julian's Mother had driven the Woman to be fed up with the situation. This leads to where Julian's Mother offers the little boy a penny and gets hit with the woman's purse. It is unclear what was her motivation it could have been an inability to see her actions being insulting or her mindset of being superior to them. Either way it was a clear example of her not understanding what other people try to convey. With the other woman repetitively pulling her child away from Julian's mother, making short direct conversation, and hitting her child it was clear to everyone including Julian that the woman wanted to be left alone. In the end when she has a stroke we see not a gasp of hate but a gasp of reliance. Reliance for her African American nurse Caroline, in this statement "Tell Caroline to come get me," (O'Connor 246) she calls out for her right after she called for her grandfather showing that she has no distain for the people but just a learned mindset for it. This is important because another character seems to share this trait.

Julian the son recently out of college has a better mindset at first glance. This is due to his recent college experience and him having his head more square on his head compared to his mother who is more or less stuck in the old ways of the past. But despite these facts Julian and his mother are similar, not in the way of discrimination but in the way of patronization. When the situation arose when he used the well-dressed African American to prove a point, he bothered him because he did not think he could spark up a conversation with him because he was "entrenched behind his paper" (O'Connor 241). The truth is that he bothered him more by putting him between him and his mother and needlessly asking for a light. If he just had a conversation with the man like he would have anyone else he would avoided bothering that man to a similar amount as his mother bothered the African American mother. He may have had good intensions but through Julian's pursuit to prove his mother wrong he tries other times on the bus to spark up conversation with other people of darker skin but he judges them based on their job, clothes and everything but their skin. That is just as bad as his mother judging them based on their skin and forgoing everything else. Later he imagines situations where he would have his mother forced to admit other races equality. An example of this is when he described the "ultimate horror" (O'Connor 242) of bringing home a woman of color for his mom to be forced into accepting them. Through his language and his actions it sounds like he only accepts people of other races only because his mother does not accept them. 

This story is about the commentary of old and new ideals in the South during desegregation. But it is also a commentary on how people seem to join another side just for opposition. Just because Julian does not show prejudice against others like his mother does not mean he does not think of others as inferior in other ways, primarily as objects to get back at his mother. The time of desegregation was a time of judging of both sides. But in the end Julian judged more people including his mother than his mother herself.

