In the short story "Everything That Arises Must Converge," Flannery O'Connor writes about a man who takes his mother on the bus to a weight-loss class. The man, Julian, is an only child whose father is dead. While O'Connor doesn't reveal Julian's exact age, he makes it clear that he has been an adult for some time. His mother, who struggled to raise Julian as a young man, still supports him. The story goes into detail about the emotional relationship this man has with his mother and how that leaves him emotionally stunted and depressed. Flannery O'Connor chose to make the main characters mother and son to demonstrate that a boy who fails to become an independent adult man, that is, who remains an immature and dependent child, is an emotionally paralyzed person and therefore, angry and depressed. Flannery O'Connor believes that boys should grow up to be men, and that in this society that means rejecting and alienating all the ways and attitudes of women. If a boy is unable to do this, as Julian is, he develops self-hatred. One of the ways O'Connor shows that boys who can't separate from their mother end up living miserable lives is by continually mentioning how much Julian hates his mother. In fact, Julian really hates himself, but he needs to transfer his hatred onto his mother, so he can try to believe that his unhappiness is her fault. While Julian has reasons to dislike some of his mother's qualities, he has no real reason to dislike her the way he says he does. Flannery O'Connor makes this obvious by having Julian admit that he is in fact aware, to some extent, of the aforementioned fact:Julian thought he might be... middle of paper... a class of hers. Flannery O'Connor makes a very strong argument that boys who cannot gain or are not given the strength to mature into men and separate from their mothers are forever, in a metaphorical sense, children; they never learn to think and act like adults. When they come to recognize this fact, they inevitably live with feelings of inadequacy, frustration, anger, resentment, and despair. Works Cited O'Connor, Flannery. Everything that arises must converge. New York: The Noonday Press, 1956. Works consulted Feeley, Kathleen, Flannery O'Connor: Voice Of The Peacock. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972.Hendin, Josephine. The World of Flannery O'Connor. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1970. Stephens, Martha. The Flannery O'Connor issue. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.