Flannery O’Connor’s The Life You Save May Be Your Own is about a young man with good intentions, a girl that represents the innocence left in the world, and a mother that is selfish. He speaks of how corrupt the world is and how there are no good people left; he becomes a hypocrite when he conforms to the world and does the things he said he would never do. O’Connor writes this story to show that the world is degrading and there are hardly any genuine people left. O’Connor uses diction to express her anger and sorrow for what the world is becoming. Tom Shiftlet arrives at Lucynell and her mother’s house and starts explaining there is “no good left in this world.” He finds a car in their barn and gets a fascination with it; it hasn’t ran in years and he says “he [is] even going to make that automobile run.” This represents a bible analogy because Tom sees this as bringing someone back from the dead. He thinks that he is one of few good people left in the world. While Tom represents a Jesus figure, Lucynell represents “a pawn in a game of chess.” (Welock, 2009) It is obvious that …show more content…
The mother also represents selfishness because throughout the story she tries to force everything to be her way. When she talks to Shiftlet she hints at him that “no man on earth is going to take that sweet girl of [hers] away.” Her sneaky and evil ways begin to come over Shiftlet and she tells him that she knows he won’t take her daughter away from her. In reality the mother wants to get rid of Lucynell in the easiest way possible. She compliments on how innocent she is and uses Shiftlet’s comments on how he wants an innocent girl against him. The mother pretty much forces Shiftlet to marry Lucynell and take her away from
The religious imagery in Flannery O'Connor's 'The Life You Save May Be Your Own' gives the story a cynical undertone along with a healthy dose of irony. O'Connor uses allusions to Jesus and Christianity to examine the hypocrisies of the religion and its adherents. Her character Tom T. Shiftlet is portrayed paradoxically as both the embodiment of Christ and an immoral, utterly selfish miscreant. By presenting these polarities side by side within one persona, O'Connor shows the dichotomies between so-called Christian morality and the reality of the Church.
Not only does he use obscene diction, he also uses extended metaphors to compare two things and how they’re related in the story. In the book, he compares the woman to the land by saying, “She was part of the land.” He is saying that the woman is a danger. He states Lieutenant Cross and Martha were pressed together and that the “pebble in his mouth was her tongue” (11). O’Brien compares the pebble and Martha’s tongue to show that Lieutenant Cross loved Martha with all his soul and that he carried her everywhere he went.
Religion is a big influence in Flannery O 'Connor 's writing. “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” stresses the idea of good and evil. This can also be viewed at the evil in Christ. The story is set in the early 1900s. “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” begins with a woman and her disabled daughter sitting on their porch and she notices a man walking towards their home. The man, Mr. Shiftlet, sees an old car that he wants. The old woman, Lucynell, is also craving something and takes the opportunity to achieve it. By her use of symbols, imagery, and irony, she reveals that there is corruption within Christ.
Within the outlining theme of Choices and Possibilities the short story The Life You Save May Be Your Own focuses on the choices made by the main male character Mr. Shiftlet. Mr. Shiftlet demonstrates choices by choosing to stay and work for food and a place for him to stay without the old lady he is working for being able to pay him for his work. While working around the elderly lady’s home, Mr. Shiftlet starts to take a great personal interest in her old place and even promising to restore an antique 1920’s Ford automobile belonging to the woman's late husband.
The central idea communicated by point of view in this story is that if one is resistant to adapting to the changing times then they’ll become ignorant. The point of view O’Connor uses to convey
“The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor introduces two morally flawed characters. There is Mr. Shiflet who claims to be a man of “moral intelligence”, yet reveals himself to be amoral through his actions. Then there is Mrs. Crater, a mother who acts through selfishness. Though both of these characters have their flaws, Mrs. Crater is the worst person due to her actions regarding her daughter. Mrs. Crater’s obsessiveness and selfishness caused her to lose the most important person in her life.
Flannery O’Connor’s short story The Life You Save May Be Your Own, takes place in a rural area with a few powerful main characters, and though the literal meaning is not challenging to comprehend, the symbolic and metaphorical meanings are much more complex, requiring further analysis. One of the most touching and relatable themes in the story is that redemption is often overlooked because of personal greed.
All throughout America, high schools have a set academic structure that guide students in learning the path of our literature. One of the literature techniques that students are taught to learn is dark romanticism. Flannery O’Conner attempted to copy the novel, “The Devil in Tom Walker”. O’Connor set a great example of dark romanticism by writing “The Life Your Save May Be Your Own” due to the desolate locations, the hidden symbols, and the deaths by murder or madness.
The mother is a complex creature proven throughout the story. These actions all help express why mothers and their presence are so important. As shown, they are very crucial in the development of younger beings. The mother is a helper by nature, impacting by teaching its child to survive at life. Independence is the arch lesson that is taught by the mother. Harlow enduringly grasps the cardinal meaning of why it is inhumane to destroy any kind of maternal bond. Mothers are not people to depend on, but are people to make depending not
It symbolizes her family in a way. When the family is down, the plant is down. Mama is constantly in protection of the plant, in hopes of holding on to her dream. Walter in comparison is always looking to be somebody and make it in life. Walter sees wealth as the only solution to this. He longs for financial support. He becomes corrupted by society -to find his identity through money. Walter tells his mother, "I want so many things"(60). This shows his greediness.
Shiftlet is so desperate to escape the responsibility of marriage that he is willing to showcase his more materialistic side, in hopes of making himself undesirable or seemingly unfit for that type of commitment. Another example of symbolism in this story is the title itself. Although he does not realize it, Tom has stumbled across the old woman’s farm because fate brought him there for a specific reason; he is given the choice of helping these people and possibly “saving” their lives, or saving his own life (in his eyes, his freedom). “In Mrs. Crater and Lucynell, Shiftlet is presented with an opportunity for a real sacrifice, an opportunity to love unlovable people. Shiftlet refuses it in order to remain free and mobile...Shiftlet is trying to save his own life - while he is given the chance to at least improve Lucynell’s or Mrs. Crater’s.” (Ragen). Just from the very first description of Tom, the readers could sense he may not be the most reliable or trustworthy person, but they also secretly hope that, as the story moves along, he will become a better person and realize his full potential as a husband and caretaker. The symbolism of the story’s title immediately gives the audience an idea that something is at risk here, and while the obvious answer is Mrs. Crater’s and Lucynell’s lives, Tom believes the answer is his version of life: freedom.
Flannery O'Connor is one of America’s best Catholic writers, by a wide margin. In, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, she goes to great lengths to portray catholic concepts, especially the fall of man to sin. At the beginning of the story, we can see Tom Shiftlet as a man who is very concerned with his own “moral intelligence”, showing that he is open to the love of God. However, right away, hints har given to show that he could also reject God. When he is first described, he wears black, traditionally representing the christian adversary, as well as a disconnection from God more generally. In addition to this, he forms his body into a cross in front of the sun, however it is lopsided and incomplete due to his missing arm. Immediately (though he seems to care little for money) it is obvious that he lusts after Lucynell Crater’s automobile. Mrs. Crater offers to give him a place to stay and feed him, in exchange for work around the farm. However, lest one think that Mrs. Crater is saintly, she is mostly of the hope that Shiftlet will marry her deaf daughter. This forms one of the main interplays of the story, in that both characters have something the other wants, and both know it. This produces quite witty and interesting dialogue throughout. Lucynell the younger, it should be pointed out, is portrayed to be the perfect woman for the man. Indeed, she seems to represent more than simple innocence, but a gift from God. In the end, Mrs. Crater trades the truck for her daughter's hand in marriage, in her mind, winning her salvation. Shiftlet takes the car and Lucynell the younger for a honeymoon. They stop to get food, and Lucynell manages to fall asleep on the table, after which Shiftlet leaves her. Thus he has sealed his fate through rejecting the goodwill of God in the name of freedom in true luciferian fashion. The car has previously been likened to a casket and a coffin, through Mrs. Crater and Mr. Shiftlet conversations. It has now become his casket,
They partake in a war revolving around the ideals of Christianity and the existence of God and morality, however it is entirely filled with hypocrisy. O’Conner’s belief of a single gesture is proven to be true when Rufus tears a page of the Bible and eats it, and act that would typically to be considered sacrilegious, in order to show his faith in God and/or Jesus. O'Connor believes that people that are liberal and atheistic are wrong and egotistical. O’Connor also shows that conservatives and people that are religious can be hypocritical and egotistical. I believe that she thinks that naturally people are inclined towards religion and that people by nature are hypocrites even if they do not try to
The minister then questions her but after his unsuccessful attempt, Mother’s actions become a scandal throughout the town because “any deviation from the ordinary course of life in this quiet town was enough to stop all progress in it” (C670). This does not bother Mother and she successfully continues with her plans. By overcoming this alienation both characters achieve feminine empowerment.
Death is inevitable to all forms of life. In giving birth to a typical family, Flannery O’Connor immediately sets the tone for their deaths, in the story, A Good Man is Hard To Find. O'Connor’s play on words, symbolism and foreshadowing slowly paves the way for the family’s death.