Durand 1

Bella Durand
Henderson
2.4 Universal Claim
31 May 2013
Thatll Teach Ya
Resentment acts like a cancer in many people negative emotion feeding off itself until it
consumes its hosts mind, changing dislike into obsessive, intense hatred towards a specific
person. As this occurs, so may demonization a transformation of the hosts perception of the
object of their hatred from a person with unpleasant characteristics into a person defined only by
those characteristics. The same thing happens with the characters Julian, of Flannery OConnors
Everything that Rises Must Converge, and Monisha or Mona of Chitra Banerjee
Divakarunis The Love of a Good Man. Julian sees nothing in his mother except her blatant
racism and refusal to update her perspective on Americas social environment, as shes prosegregation during the American Civil Rights Movement. While Julians demonization of her
mother may have a justified source, his view of his mother through the course of the story is
nothing short of malicious. Due to their mutual stubbornness, most of Julians actions are
specifically motivated towards spiting his mother and gaining moral superiority with his
contemporary view on civil rights and social norms, as their differences in morality are what
caused their conflict. Mona also has a source of resentment towards her father: he left her and her
mother in India for a better life in America, and shortly afterward her mother died of cancer. And
while this resentment can also be justified, her later demonization of her father is not. Due to the
closeness in proximity of his departure and her mothers death, she strongly associates the former
causing the latter, something not provable but nonetheless present in Monas perceptions of her
parents: her father an evil creature who killed his wife, and her mother the victim of the man she
loved. Like Julian, her interactions with her father are aimed specifically toward spiting him and

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gaining moral superiority holding the death of her mother against him as a woman with a
complete family of her own. People who let their resentments, borne of moral conflict, towards
their parents fester will demonize them into a morally faulted monster, and will act spitefully
towards them in order to gain moral superiority in their conflict.
From the start of the story, Julians feelings toward his mother are very clear while
waiting for his mother his hands behind him, [he] appeared pinned to the door frame, waiting
like Saint Sebastian for the arrows to begin piercing him (OConnor 1064). Saint Sebastian is a
martyr in the Catholic faith; in comparing himself to Saint Sebastian, he implies that he is
making a great sacrifice in the act of escorting his mother to her reducing class, with the
determination to make himself completely numb during the time he would be sacrificed to her
pleasure (OConnor 1065). They quarrel clearly when it comes to their differing moral stances
on reputation and racial politics. His mother places more emphasis on family reputation and
status as she emphasizes a multitude of times, If you dont know who you are, Im ashamed
of you (OConnor 1066) in a time where neither matter as much as success and intelligence,
at least in the mind of Julian. This comes up specifically while on the bus, as Julian thrust his
face toward her and hissed, True culture is in the mind, the mind,Its in the heart, she said,
and in how you do things and how you do things is because of who you are (OConnor 1068).
As a corollary to her stubborn attachment to her belief in outdated social norms, she is against
the Civil Rights Movement as well this is first established when she would not ride the buses
by herself at night since they had been integrated (OConnor 1064), indicating that despite the
enormous social change going on in the zeitgeist of the story, she refuses to accept it as positive
and is vocally proud of the idea that her grandfather was once a slave owner. Julian fervently
opposes these beliefs, to the point that when he got on a bus by himself, he made it a point to sit

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down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mothers sins (OConnor 1067). While on
the bus with her, however, Julian gets a thought that defines his all-consuming resentment and
demonization of his mother for the sake of having some advantage in their moral conflict, as
after enduring his mothers racist gossiping for a few minutes on the bus, The presence of his
mother was borne in upon him as she gave a pained sigh. He looked at her bleakly. She was
holding herself very erect under the preposterous hat, wearing it like a banner of her imaginary
dignity. There was in him an evil urge to break her spirit (OConnor 1067).
After this, he acts specifically in order to upset his mother or as he perceives it, various
unlikely ways by which he could teach her a lesson (OConnor 1071) in how the world has
changed around her, attempting to appear morally superior by acting spitefully against her, using
the African Americans that appear on the bus as tools in his plan. When a well-dressed black man
sits on the bus, Julian rose, crossed the aisle, and sat down [next to the black man]. From this
position, he looked serenely across at his mother. Her face had turned an angry red. He stared at
her, making his eyes the eyes of a stranger. He felt his tension suddenly lift as if he had openly
declared war on her (OConnor 1070). This simple, but deliberate act of sitting next to a black
man is enough to upset his mother, this show one step in spiting his mother and teaching her, in
some fashion, that acceptance of African American ascendance, his perspective, is the right side
in their moral conflict. In his mind, he goes further than that, fantasizing ways to utilize African
Americans in different situations specifically to upset her, an example being having a black
girlfriend:
He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare yourself, he
said. There is nothing you can do about it. This is the woman Ive chosen. Shes
intelligent, dignified, even good, and shes suffered and she hasnt thought it fun.

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Now persecute us, go ahead and persecute us. Drive her out of here, but
remember, youre driving me too. His eyes were narrowed and through the
indignation he had generated, he saw his mother across the aisle, purple-faced,
shrunken to the dwarf-like proportions of her moral nature, sitting like a mummy
beneath the ridiculous banner of her hat. (OConnor 1071)
His last step in spiting his mother in order to show her the flaws in her morality and thus gain
moral superiority is to use an intimidating black woman and her son when they step on the bus.
When the woman, wearing the same hat as his mother, sits down next to Julian and her son next
to his mother, he comes to a realization: The vision of the two hats, identical, broke upon him
with the radiance of a brilliant sunrise He could not believe that Fate had thrust upon his
mother such a lesson His grin hardened until it said to her plainly as if he were saying it aloud:
your punishment exactly fits your pettiness. This should teach you a permanent lesson
(OConnor 1072). He believes that matching hats will show his mother that shes not as superior
to black citizens as she thinks she is, for all she talks up family reputation and black
subordination, and is upset when this fails to incite a negative reaction from her. Shes fixated on
the womans young son, and when both pairs of mother and son leave the bus, she attempts to
give him a penny, but is punched by the boys mother, upset with her old-fashioned act and
believing it to be insultingly patronizing. Rather than worry for his mother, his resentment
instead twists his reaction into believing the punch was deserved, and says as much to her face.
As they walk home, Julian makes a final endeavor for her to understand her lesson he
attempted to teach her: That was your black double. She can wear the same hat as you, and to
be sure, he added gratuitously (because he thought it was funny), it looked better on her than it
did on you. What all this means, he said, is that the old world is gone. The old manners are

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obsolete and your graciousness is not worth a damn You arent who you think you are
(OConnor 1075). Julian giving his final words on the matter is to emphasize his superiority on
the matter, as he believes he is teaching her acceptance through his actions. Instead, it is his
demonization of her and her features that motivates him to act spitefully, attempting to gain
moral superiority in their conflict while feeling self-satisfied that his actions successfully upset
his mother and gained him an advantage in their conflict, paying no mind to her feelings.
Mona doesnt re-encounter her resentment of her father until shes forced to confront it
her father calls her, at home with her own family, to ask to visit her one-year old son, Bijoy. Her
reaction is much stronger than she expects: What does surprise me is the hate, welling up from
someplace in me I didnt know was there. Since he left us, I had only heard from my father
once The sophisticated tone of my refusal convinced me that I had overcome the rage of my
adolescent years. Now my hand shakes so hard that I have to put down the spoon (Divakaruni
93-94). Her underlying resentment towards her father was first borne of his departure from their
family when she was a teenager. Over time, however, she has come to demonize her father into
the person who indirectly killed her mother; as she says, the loss of a love, even if its not a
good mans, can kill you (Divakaruni 90). Even though Monas mother died of cancer, the
cancer fatally spread through her mother around the same time her father left a coincidence that
Mona takes as cause and effect. Hence, throughout her life Mona has believed her father to be a
monster, not only for leaving their family but for aiding her mothers death, a moral dilemma that
due to the circumstances Mona can only see herself superior in. Her resentment is acknowledged
later when her husband Dilip, unaware of the specific circumstances surrounding her mothers
death and fathers desertion, attempts to convince her to allow the visit. As Dilip says, I know
you blame him for the hardships you had to go through after he left. And you have the right to

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You bet I do, I want to shout. The sheet is thick and inescapable, a casing of ice. You bet I
do. The bastard killed my mother. Its something Ive never said aloud (Divakaruni 95). Mona
does recognize that her family with Dilip has a greater sense of normalcy and completeness than
her family with her parents did, noting that Dilips insistence on getting her father to visit had
less to do with my father than with the idea of fatherhood, what it means to him (Divakaruni
100), she agrees to allow her father visit, not only to please her husband, but knowing that she
can use Dilips fatherhood and the completeness of her family against the father who abandoned
her and her mother.
Mona attempts to spite her father and gain superiority in their moral conflict by choosing
specific things to prepare for his visit, doing so in order to remind him of what he lost and the
damage he incurred after he left. For example, instead of cleaning her home to look presentable,
I have decided I will not go to any trouble to prepare for my fathers visit. I want him to know
that I dont care about impressing him (Divakaruni 102), though immediately changing her
mind, thinking that I should have covered the table in designer batiks. I should have dressed
Bijoy in his embroidered birthday kurta. I should have put on my reddest lipstick and highest
heels, forcing my father to look up, amazed and vexed by the daughter who made a success in
her life in spite of him (Divakaruni 102). She fantasizes doing so and proceeding to slam her
door in his face, punishing him for what he did to his mother while imagining him looking just
as he did on that last day, elegant in a pencil-thin mustache, wearing a navy blue suit so new its
creases could cut your hands (Divakaruni 105). She is surprised to see him when he finally
appears, how old he is, his head shiny with hairlessness, his loose-skinned face where I cannot
find any traces of the man I hated. I stare at him as he leans on a cane and peers through thick
glasses with the anxiousness of the aged (Divakaruni 105-106). This does not fit her mental

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image of her father, the unfamiliar creature who left his family behind to go to America, but it
does not shake her demonization completely. In order to give her father further reminders of the
wife he lost, Mona put a vase of jasmine on the bedside table in the guest room. And Id ironed
my mothers sari to wear to dinner (Divakaruni 106-107), jasmine being a symbol for her
mother as she would occasionally wear it in her hair when her husband was still with them,
though these reminders do not visibly spite him as she expected. However, as she watches her
father interact with her son, she understands that her father does not expect to be allowed to visit
again, and Mona thinks, For a moment I see myself as he must: the daughter who carries a
mountain of grudges on her shoulder, vengeful as any evil fairy in a childhood tale, and as filled
with power. Can I say he is entirely wrong? (Divakaruni 108). Mona first acted in spite against
her father in order to gain moral superiority regarding how shes part of a complete family
compared to how he abandoned his, but in recognition of her demonization of her father and her
own faults, her real gain in their conflict compared to what she wanted is left ambiguous.
The conflicts between Julian, Mona, and their respective parents do not end the way they
wish. Julians mother dies, making his hate-driven lessons fruitless as the tide of darkness
seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world
of guilt and sorrow (OConnor 1076). Watching her father sleep, Mona finally sees her father
for who he is, the prince who never grew up, who, trapped by the mundane demands of a
household, believed he could free himself with a single, graceful slash of his sword. Not so
different from me, slashing through life with anger as my weapon of choice (Divakaruni 116).
Their realization of how their anger and hatred had consumed them gave a possibility for some
growth and acceptance of their parents, but as it comes at the end of their respective stories, they

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are not allowed that chance, just like others who allow the same resentment and demonization to
take over, not realizing the damage it incurs until its too late.

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Works Cited
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. The Love of a Good Man. The Unknown Errors of Our Lives.
New York: Double Day, 2001. 89-117.
OConnor, Flannery. Everything That Rises Must Converge. Major Writers of Short Fiction.
Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins Press. 1993. 1064-1076.