Sorry I misinterpreted you, Eytanz.
But mostly, I want to hear more about the comparison to O'Connor, which I haven't thought about. Could you please explain what you mean by "a fantasy equivalent"? Equivalent in what sense?
"Everything That Rises Must Converge" is O'Connor's moving story of how a woman's life is hollowed out and ruined by her racism. It's a story of the tragic effect of racism on the racist (a theme often reinforced by anti-racist advocates, and which can even be seen in the narratives written by former slaves such as Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs who escaped while slavery was still a solid institution, and wrote about their lives to try to inform northerners about what slavery was and persuade them to oppose it). The characterization is a mixed experience, swinging the reader between disdain for the woman's racism, and pity for how pathetic she is.
Senator Bilbo is a similar figure -- except that we're in his head, instead of in the head of another character. He's a great and powerful man, with much invested in his self-image as a great and powerful man -- but in fact, his power has leached away. Time has moved away from him, so that now the traits which made him great and powerful make him mockable. Again, ideally, this should be a painfully mixed experience to watch. We, the audience, share the sensibilities of those who laugh at Bilbo. He's funny, and despicable, and easy to mock. But inside his head, we see how ruined he is, how pathetic; we cringe for him, uncomfortably.
Near the end of his life, my grandfather embodied this uncomfortable mix of despicable behavior and being pitiable. He was an unmitigated ass, who had been abusive toward his children, creating a great deal of psychological damage to my mother and her sisters. In the hospital, after he was simulatneously hit by a car and afflicted by esophagial cancer (either of which he could have survived, the combination of which killed him), he would reach out desperately for someone to hold his hand -- for some comfort, any comfort. He was a terrible person, but I cringed for his need and I pitied him, and I wept as I held his hand.
In "Everything That Rises Must Converge," OConner kills the racist woman. She literally dies of her inability to change; her racism not only damages, but kills her. Or, in a different analysis, the racist woman refuses to change, but time continues to move on, and one of them must give way to the other.
I actually find Bilbo's ending much more moving and unsettling. By the end of the story, Bilbo has realized that his time has passed. His illusions are gone; he sees himself as pathetic. But unlike O'Connor's character, he doesn't die, he doesn't fade -- he has to live with his realization and ruin. As my grandfather, fragile for the last few days of his life, had to live with the lack of power that he'd taken pride in (and used to hurt other people), as he asked my father (his son-in-law) for help peeing in a bottle, and begged my mother and my grandmother to spend just a few more minutes in the hospital, even as they nodded with exhaustion.