Generational Hierarchy in “The Artificial N*gger,” “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” and “Why Do The Heathen Rage?” Sahil Khandare 12th Grade

Flannery O’Connor explores ‘generations’ and the hierarchies between them through her short stories, “The Artificial N*gger,” “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” and “Why Do The Heathen Rage?”. To that purpose, she uses the narrator as a giver of ‘judgement’ and a higher authority. O’Connor is particularly interested in debunking clichés surrounding the traditional roles present in a generational hierarchy. One expects the older one of a generational hierarchy to be a source of learning and wisdom for the younger one. O’Connor, however, displays a disregard for traditional societal roles and develops her characters in a way that the aforementioned roles of a generational hierarchy are reversed. ‘The child becomes the parent and the parent becomes the child’, in effect. Thus when one would expect a parent to impart wisdom to the child, often in the case of O’Connor’s characters, the opposite occurs. This ‘reversal of roles’ reveals itself through the actions of the characters of the three stories.

In “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, the two protagonists are Julian ad his mother, who is again unnamed. Julian’s mother is an orthodox Southerner who still firmly believes in the outdated concepts of race and lineage. Julian,...