What is the setting of Flannery O'Connor's short story "Everything That Rises Must Converge"?

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Everything That Rises
Must Converge” employs several different settings. Initially, for instance, we see
Julian and his mother at home; then we see them moving from their home to a bus stop;
then we see them boarding a bus; and then, finally, we witness what happens to them
after they leave the bus.

Each aspect of the story’s
setting is significant. For example, the brief glimpse of life at home which we witness
at the beginning of the story is somewhat ironic, because Julian’s mother will never
return to this home, since at the end of the story she will be dead. Although she
explicitly desires to return “Home” just before she dies, it is clear by this point that
the “home” she has in mind is actually her childhood home, where she was loved and cared
for by a black servant named Caroline. This home symbolizes the mother's attachment to
the past as well as the possibility of racial
convergence.

Indeed, the mother's memories of this “home”
are significant, because Julian also fantasizes about the same large, prestigious home.
Likewise, Julian also fantasizes about the kind of home he would like to inhabit in the
future if he ever has the chance – a home in which neighbors would be as far away from
him as possible. This imagined setting symbolizes Julian’s pride as well as his
narcissistic self-involvement. Thus the settings in the story include not only the
obvious settings that the characters actually visit but also the past or imagined
settings which help shape (or reveal) who they are as
persons.

Meanwhile, the second important “real” setting of
the story – the bus – is a highly significant setting for several reasons. First, it
helps symbolize the literal and figurative journey that Julian and his mother are
undertaking. Second, the bus is a microcosm of society, thus allowing Julian’s mother
and other passengers to reveal their various social prejudices, including prejudices
involving both race and class.The bus is a meaningful setting because it symbolizes the
issue of racial integration which is so important to this
work.

Finally, the bus is also a significant setting
because it is while she is on the bus that Julian’s mother unexpectedly meets her “black
double,” who is wearing exactly the same kind of hat that the mother is wearing. Because
the bus is a confined setting, the black woman cannot easily distance herself from
Julian’s annoying, condescending mother until both mothers and both sons have descended
from the steps of the bus. It is only after they leave the bus together that the black
woman strikes Julian’s mother with her purse, a blow that leads to Julian’s mother’s
death.

Before she dies, however, Julian’s mother stumbles
briefly through the dark streets of the city. It is now, when she is essentially alone
in the city, that Julian's mother speaks of her desire to return home. She can never, of
course, return “home” in the literal sense, although it is possible to assume that she
does return “home” in a higher sense, after her death, by returning to
heaven.

Julian, in any case, now seems poised to enter an
altogether new setting himself, even if that setting is only figurative: he seems about
to enter a “world of guilt and sorrow.” Neither Julian nor his mother, then, ever
returns “home” to the kind of life we saw them living as the story
opened.