The Lame Shall Enter First

Flannery O' Connor stories "The Lame Shall Enter First" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge" has a lot of resemblances of grief and troubled family relationship.
The similarities of both story suggests that author herself seems unhappy and had experience some hard times in her own life, like her incurable disease that eventually lead to her death. The personal family trouble and the lack of attention from Sheppard to his son, also is similar in the relationship between Julian and his own mother acceptance in the “Everything Must Converge” story. Both stories show that trouble relationship between a parent and a child may have consequences later in life. The lack of parental attention from Sheppard with his son and the loss of his mother contributed to Norton unhappiness and difficult grieving of his mother death. Selfishness took over Sheppard not realizing that he could not save the world helping others and he could be more thoughtful of his own son. The regrets that consume his thoughts after his son’s death, contributed for his realization that now is too late and like most people in life, only appreciate something when you can’t have anymore and unfortunally it can’t go back in time, being too late to recognize the mistakes made.

Everything that Rises Must Converge

The author of this short story Flannery O'Connor exposed very well the trouble relationship between a mother and a son, and also the social problems in an racist world that Julian mother's and all of us live in. Being poor to her is acceptable, she assures herself all the time that once they were wealthy, they had a beautiful house, but her reality is completely different, she lived her life struggling to pay the bills and to pay her son's college, but appearance is more important to her than anything else, she never let her status go down, even broke and failed. The story shows a reality that is most common than we imagine. Only after loose his mother, Julian realizes he could be more kind and regrets for a lot of things he could have done. A lot people like him don't appreciate anything in life, just realizing that they lost something wonderful when is too late. The racial tension occurred in the story, is an example of arrogance and despair. Nobody is better than nobody. Every human being is the same and deserve mutual respect. The world would be a better place to live if tolerance and kindness were thought since childhood, the results would be invaluable.