The Lame Shall Enter First

I find it interesting that Sheppard, the father, makes a comment or thought about his son regarding his wife's death and it had only been a year since his mother's death and the boy was almost 11years ago. To me in this one passage of this story sums up what the story is about. How can anyone expect a 10 year old to fully copy with the death of their mother? This thought in itself tells me that the father is not coping at all with the death of his wife. The father so paralyzed with grief..thrusts himself into his work and helping who he deems as needing, in this case a boy named Rufus. The interest the father seems to have in this other boy is that he is needy. He has a clubbed foot, one leg is shorter then the other. However, the descriptions of his own son are not any better. His son had large round ears that hung down, and faded out blue eyes and one was a lazy eye. So in the descriptions of the boys they are the same, however one has his needs met, which in the eyes of Sheppard equates to having EVERYTHING and other boy has nothing but an IQ. The theme of the story to me would be that you do not know what you have until it is gone. This can been seen in the next to last paragraph of the story. I personally did not enjoy this story and at the beginning of my 1102 class and this one, I was really starting to enjoy what I was reading to really going back to hating it because the stories in my opinion are sooo blase and blantenly obvious.

Everything That Rises must Converge

This story could be titled; everything that rises must fall. On the surface this is a racial story of a white bigot woman and the indifference she has towards her son. But looking closely there is something deeper. Julian's mother is never named during the story and she is referred to as her or Julian's mother. This character is portrayed as a "well to do" white southern lady. Her blood line as discussed on page 395 states that her grandfather was a former governor of state. So if this woman is SO "well to do" why isn't she named? She is proud to have an apartment in a neighborhood where each house has a "narrow collar of dirt around it and in which sat, usually, a grubby child" (394). Now it states in the story she is a widow raising a child alone....and that the son has gone to college but over and over again it is stated that Julian would "make a living some day..but he knew he never would" (394). This is the story of a woman who has had everything taken from her, even with the best of intentions her own son. He obviously did not turn out the way she had intended and this culminates throughout the entire story. I think the "coloreds or Negros" are the mother's outlet of her own lack of self worth. The black people that are portrayed on the bus are strong characters and one even wears the same hat. To me this is significant.