All That Arises Must Converge Flannery O'Connor once said “All my stories are about the working of grace on a character who is not very willing to sustain it, but Most people think of these stories as equally harsh, hopeless and brutal." But to many readers this may seem very ironic. This perspective can be easily grasped by readers seeing how she is very unsympathetic towards the characters; he made all his characters who are ultimately led to their downfall very proud people; but yet it places them in a very physiologically vulnerable position and they claim to be ungrateful for the grace that surrounds them. His stories revolve heavily around the shredding of the lie in a form of acceptance and embracing of defeat or humility; but it also doesn't give any chance for redemption by ending most of the stories with the cornered characters in a state of complete collapse. The stories also contain many heavily imposed Christian ideologies and morals, and with the brutality with which she imposes these morals it is not surprising that the reader might see her as a twisted and aggressive critic of the Bible. His unsympathetic attitude towards the characters in his stories could be seen in the way he structured the characters, the situation and the environment in which they find themselves. He often structures the character to be very proud, and these people's pride does not allow them to admit defeat or loss in the situation; but would instead continue to haunt the characters' minds, causing them to enter a false reality that they are somehow more superior than the people around them, due to certain attributes such as their social class, race, knowledge, or heritage. An example of a character like these would be Julian and his mother in his story "Everything Rises Must Converge". Julian's mother was proud of what his grandfather was; and finds himself fragile in the current state of the world because of what it has transformed into; but she was not willing to show her weakness to the people around her. As for Julian, his problem was that in some ways he was a failure, considering he was a grown man still living off his mother; but yet he feels the need to not let his mother overwhelm him, but he has failed to do so in any other way other than judging her judgment and behavior towards African Americans.