Flannery O'Connor once said: "...It is when the monster can be perceived as a figure of our essential displacement that it reaches a certain depth in literature." With this, O'Connor correctly uses the monster to symbolize his recurring theme of a grotesque point of view on the world, and such symbolism is used prominently in two of his short stories, "All that arises must converge" and "Good country people." In both stories, the monster awakens both the characters in the stories, and, indeed, the reader themselves, to the fact that they embody the same state as the monster. In “All That Rises Must Converge,” Julian's mother's racism serves as the displacement in the story, while the black characters encountered on the bus ride symbolically represent the monster. Julian's mother expresses her pity towards the black race when she states: “Most of them are not our kind of people, but I can be kind to anyone. I know who I am." Although people have no choice about the skin color they are born with, the mother still believes that, through God, all people are c...