To Save Your Own Life

Saving a life is a big deal. In many stories the tales of life saving events contain a hero and a damsel in distress. O’Conner’s story is very different from this original view of saving a life. In O’Conner’s story a man walks up to an old farm house and starts to talk to the old lady who owns it. She says that she can give him work and food, but no money. He eventually agrees and begins working for her while living in her old run down car. He vows that he is going to fix it up and make it run. As he stays there the old lady begins to talk to him about her daughter. He daughter is about sixteen and cannot talk and is always doing strange things. The old lady wants Mr. Shiftlet to marry her daughter. Her argument is that she will never talk back or complain to him. Once he gets the old car running then the old lady really starts to pester him about marrying her daughter. Finally he gives in and he marries the daughter. On their way to a mobile when he stopped at a restaurant because he thought that she must be hungry, but once they are seated inside she falls asleep. Then he leaves her asleep in the restaurant and drove on. On the way he sees a boy standing on the side of the road picks him up. The boy does not say much and Mr. Shiftlet begins to tell him things about his mother and how he left her. The boy gets upset all of s sudden and yells at him and then jumps out of the car with his suit case. Then it starts raining and he raced into the Mobile. In this story I think that Mr. Shiftlet saves his own life by working on the car and then taking it. In this way he saves his own life, just like the title predicts. In The Life You Save Might Be Your Own by Flannery O’Conner Mrs. Crater’s life is fulfilled, Lucynell ends up with the...

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...l is left at the restaurant with the man who thinks that she looks like an angel from God and because she is so dependent on others when she wakes up she will end up with him. If her mother had died on the farm then Lucynell would have been left all alone and probably would have died soon after because she had no way to take care of herself. By abandoning her Mr. Shiftlet paved the way for Lucynell to save her own life. Throughout the whole story of The Life You Save May Be Your Own Mr. Shiftlet is driven to obtain the car the Mrs. Crater owns and by obtaining that in the end he saves his own life. In this way he saved himself from a life of unhappiness with Lucynell, and he also saved himself from living in the same place for forever and not ever making very much money. While he was very selfish, sometimes that is what is necessary to be able to save your own life.