SOURCE: "Faulkner's 'Barn Burning' and O'Connor's 'Everything That Rises Must Converge,'" in CLA Journal, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, June, 1993, pp. 371-83.

In the following essay, Crocker and Evans outlines similarities between O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge" and Faulkner's "Barn Burning."

As two of the most important American writers of this century, William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor wrote two of the most widely anthologized and widely read short stories of our time—"Barn Burning" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge." Although the relationship between the two writers has been a subject of occasional comment, such comment remains largely scattered and difficult to trace. In addition, although the two stories end in basically similar ways, these similarities seem not to have been discussed at any length. The links between the stories may be purely coincidental, or they may have been purposely designed. O'Connor greatly admired Faulkner (although her remarks...