Life You Save May Be Your Own

Everyday, people are forced to make choices. Some of those choices are fairly easy to make, and others are not. In the short story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor, a man by the name of Tom T. Shiftlet stumbles across a farm where an old woman and her daughter, Lucynell Crater, reside. When the author first introduces the readers to Mr. Shiftlet, he is described as “a tramp and no one to be afraid of” (674). What starts as a man accidentally coming across the woman’s farm, becomes a story that follows Tom through his unrealized quest for love and acceptance. With the help of Ms. Crater and Lucynell, Tom learns that his choices have consequences. In “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, O’Connor creates a world in

“The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, is a story which reflects on each and every one of us. The main themes expressed in this story are corruption, the lost innocence, and how we become aware of our errors yet seldom do much to correct ourselves. This final theme is best shown through Mr. Shifflets actions. Mrs. Crater is a great example of the first theme mentioned. Even though she had just met a stranger, after listening to him and his beliefs for a short while, she let him into her home, but for what reasons? Was it an act of kindness? No, it was clearly an act of selfishness. She used Mr. Shifflets skills as a carpenter to fix her home, and the car, and used her own daughter to pull him in. Those actions are the epitome of greed and corruption. Mrs. Carters daughter, Lucynell, is the savior, the “angle of Gawd”, as referred to in the story, and is a great symbol used by the author, Flannery O’Connor, to express the purity and innocence we have in ourselves, which tends to be lost through the corruption.

The short stories, “Turned”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Good Corn”, by H.E Bates provide strong examples of how the representation of characters influence’s the reader’s perception of a text. Both stories depict similar characters: a middle-aged, childless wife, her husband and an 18-year old girl who works for them. They are both about a similar situation: man cheats on wife with girl and girl falls pregnant. However, the author’s of the text are from very different backgrounds and this is reflected in their stories. Although there are many similarities between “The Good Corn” and “Turned”, the values reflected in these stories, their resolutions and the reader’s perception of them are vastly different due to the contexts of

    “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” one of O’Connor’s best works, describes a family on a trip to Florida and their encounter with an escaped prisoner, The Misfit. Although “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is an early work in O’Connor’s career, it contains many of the elements which are used in the majority of her short stories. The grandmother, a selfish and deceitful woman, is a recipient of a moment of grace, despite her many flaws and sins. A moment of grace is a revelation of truth. When the grandmother calls The Misfit her child and reaches out to touch him, the grandmother has a moment of grace that enabled her to see The Misfit as a suffering human being who she is obligated to love. The grandmother realizes that nothing will stop The Misfit from killing her but she reaches out to him despite this. The Misfit rejects her love and kills her anyway. This moment of grace is very important

In George Saunders essay “thank you, Esther Forbes”, he describes how an author who he read during his youthful age helped him to understand why and how sentences can be important. The essay is written on a more personal note about a nun named Sister Lynette who helped Saunders to develop his perception of sentences. In third grade at St. Darmian School, Saunders was given the novel “Johnny Tremain” by Esther Forbes and that was a turning point for him. This was because the book provided him with a different understanding of the joys of reading as well as writing. On the other, “escape from spider head” helps in providing an analysis of the strengths of a man being put to test. The limits presented in the story are classified as physical, emotional as well as moral. The theme of the story is searching for humanity which makes the readers ask themselves, what makes us human? According to “escape from spider head” humans are considered to be innately empathetic in nature and they are considered to be people who are against the infliction of pain as well as discomfort which is caused on another innocent human being. The aim of the essay is to elaborate more on the connection existing between “Thank you, Esther Forbes” and “Escape from Spiderhead” in terms of the details presented in the two stories.

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.

Our Life is a matter of choices. Live well and have faith and it will never go wrong. Our lives can be full of crazy ups and downs that shape our views on how life should be lived. With a similar ideology, author Flannery O’Connor’s depicts her own life struggles using different aspects and details throughout her novels and short stories. O’Connor lived by the basis that life must go on no matter the hardships. In her novels she represented various characters who made wrong choices and due to those choices suffered extreme negative consequences. Despite her struggles, O’Connor made the choice to continue on in her life yet many of her novels contradicted that same idea by having characters in her novels and short stories suffer consequences for making the wrong choices. Because the

Every writer has their own story and because of said story, it has an impact on who they are and how they think. In turn, this leads the writer into unraveling their writing style and, in an artistic way, write out their feelings in the form of a poem or story. We see this in the case of almost every writer, but as of now we 're only going to look at Mary Flannery O '- Connor. A major theme that reoccurs in much of Flannery O 'Connors work is her strong dis- like for the worlds current state, as in the condition of our world 's morality and values. Let 's see some examples in her work that support this thesis.

Life is filled with tragedies, whether they be subtle or monumental. In society we are constantly surrounded by hardships and situations that test our own individual character, forcing us to react in order to move forward. The main characters in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates each react differently to the various tragedies they encounter, revealing their true identities that lie behind the (facade?)/version of themselves they present to the world. These tragedies that factor into all three works are both presented and interpreted differently in each story: In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Mallard rejoices

The author of A Man Called Ove is Fredrik Backman. Ove, a 59 year old man, is the exact definition of a grumpy old man. For those who don’t know him he seems rude and impolite, but there is more to Ove than meets the eye. He has suffered a great deal of casualties. He was only a child when his mother died, and his father departed this world when he was sixteen years old. During those days, Ove did not live a happy life. As time passed, Ove had created his routine, but it was broken when he met the woman of his life. Ove was happy for a while, but things don’t last a life time. On their honey moon, Ove’s wife suffers a miscarriage caused by a bus accident. Not only that, but also she is left in a wheelchair. After years pass, his wife also dies, resulting in Ove living in loneliness. However, his life Changes when new neighbors stroll into Ove’s life.

What if you were given a chance to start over and do things differently? To make up for your mistakes, right your wrongs? This idea is featured as a theme in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, published in the 1953 Spring issue of The Kenyon Review (Kenyon College). The story is about a homeless man by the name of “Shiftlet” who approaches an isolated, run-down farm where “Mrs.Crater” and her mentally retarded daughter “Lucynell” lives. Crater offers Shiftlet a home to stay in if he’d do some fix-up jobs around the place, mainly on the car he’s been eyeing. As the story progresses, Crater sees that Lucynell has an affection towards Shiftlet and tries to get him to marry her. Shiftlet does marry her because

As Mr. Shiftlet is about to arrive at Mobile he starts having visions. He sees Lucynell waking up and confused. He also sees her freaking out, which led her to having seizures. Mr. Shiftlet suddenly comes back to reality by a horn, it was the horn of a semi that was about to collide with him. Mr. Shiftlet froze in the headlights with visions. These visions were different than before, this time they were of his mother and father. They were screaming at each other and Mr. Shiftlet’s father pulled out a gun. He pointed the gun towards his wife and shot then turned the gun around and killed himself.

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

People need to remind themselves that everything happens for a reason. In “How to Save a Life,” Isaac Slade from The Slay targets those who know of someone that suffers from depression. Slade uses repetition and imagery in order to make an emotional appeal so that the importance of friendship will be emphasized and his listeners can visualize the setting of the song.

Just about everyone in the world today knows either a loved one or a friend that is dying of a fatal disease or a terminal illness. Every day people are dying of incurable diseases due to the lack of knowledge or the lack of treatment for their disease. Imagine if there was a cure or an answer to save your loved ones or friends life, wouldn’t you want to give them a second chance at living life? In the recent scientific world there has been research done on stem cells. Stem cells are specially grown cells in order to help diseased patients grow better tissue in hopes of their survival and recovery. These cells can be derived though many different procedures. Extracting stem cells from a fetal embryo has proved to be the easiest and most