57 pages • 1 hour read
Flannery O'ConnorThe Life You Save May Be Your Own
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The End of Innocence
Innocence is complicated in this story. Lucynell is the embodiment of innocence, yet she is not innocent by choice. She is innocent because she is deaf and has a mental handicap that makes her dependent on others. She is the most trusting of the characters in the story and thus the easiest to manipulate. Through the character of Lucynell, the author comments on the rarity of innocence. As Mr. Shiftlet asks, “[W]here would you find you an innocent woman today?” (Paragraph 28), implying that most women are corrupted by life experience and low morals. When Mrs. Crater says, “That’s the kind for you to have. Right there” (Paragraph 57), she is referring to her daughter as a woman incapable of talking or living independently.
The story implies that Lucynell is a virgin, which at the time would be equated with innocence. During the post-wedding car ride, she takes off her Panama hat and begins pulling the cherries from the brim. Symbolically, this suggests that she is losing innocence, willingly destroying something beautiful. There is little indication Lucynell is aware of what’s happening around her, nor that she is presumably headed toward her wedding night. O’Connor implies the possibility, though, writing, “Every now and then her placid expression was changed by a sly isolated little thought like a shoot of green in the desert” (Paragraph 78).
A reader might perceive Shiftlet’s abandonment of Lucynell as a blessing for her; Mr. Shiftlet, who feels nothing for her, surely would have used and abused her. However, she is cast out into the world and cut off from her only caretaker with no means to communicate. Her fate is unclear: The “pale youth” at the lunch counter who is so taken by her beauty might take her in, she might simply wander and starve, or someone else in this “almost rotten” world might prey upon her helpless situation. The story depicts innocence in the modern world as vulnerable, stranded, and destitute. Mr. Shiftlet sees being saddled with an “innocent” woman as constrictive and unmanly. After the courthouse ceremony, “He looked morose and bitter as if he had been insulted while someone held him” (Paragraph 75). He runs from his agreed-upon responsibilities, symbolically abandoning innocence or, more to the point, trading it for a car.
The Spirit Versus the Law
After the justice of the peace wedding procedure, Mr. Shiftlet complains that the process did not satisfy him. Mrs. Crater says, “It satisfied the law” (Paragraph 76). He responds, “It’s the law that don’t satisfy me” (Paragraph 77). It is possible he genuinely expected to feel different after marrying Lucynell or simply to be applauded for his kindness to the Crater women. It is also possible that Mr. Shiftlet finds all of life to feel like an insult “while someone held him” (Paragraph 75)—i.e., when he is not fully independent—or perhaps he finds the prospect of marriage to someone with Lucynell’s disabilities beneath him. What’s clear is that Shiftlet disdains social rules and conventions, preferring to live by his own.
He says in the earlier discussion of his nuptials, “Lady, a man is divided into two parts, body and spirit” (Paragraph 66). However, Shiftlet proves loyal only to the “spirit”—that is, an internal compass dictating where he should go and what he should do. By contrast, Mrs. Crater—all pragmatism, numbers, and arrangements—represents the law. Her response to Shiftlet’s romanticism is to “[clamp] her gums together” (Paragraph 67). Marrying Lucynell is Mr. Shiftlet’s opportunity to have a home, economic security, a future, and a way to be useful to others—in short, to satisfy social norms. When Mr. Shiftlet says, “It’s the law that don’t satisfy me,” he rejects this.
Though perhaps appealing in the face of Mrs. Crater’s (and the law’s) hypocrisy, Shiftlet’s “spirit” proves no more ethical or reliable. After abandoning Lucynell, the narration remarks (with great irony), “He felt too that a man with a car has a responsibility to others” (Paragraph 89). Mr. Shiftlet adheres to some unwritten rule of the road to pick up hitchhikers in a stolen vehicle, but he does not feel any obligation toward a dependent, disabled woman—his own wife—or to the mother who has never before been separated from her. Furthermore, if his decision to pick up the boy indicates any sort of repentance, the boy himself cuts it short by bursting his latest self-important speech. Mr. Shiftlet’s desire to follow the “spirit” is ultimately just a vainglorious way of avoiding his commitment to the “law.”
The Possibility of Salvation
The story’s title refers to a sign Mr. Shiftlet sees driving away from The Hot Spot, which encourages drivers to proceed safely and slowly. The message appeals to self-interest, implying that someone is more likely to adjust their speed to save themselves than to protect others. However, Flannery O’Connor was herself Catholic, and within a Christian context the language of “saving” inevitably recalls the concept of spiritual salvation: the idea that every person is born with original sin and can only be saved by divine intervention—not, that is, through their own efforts.
The sign therefore underscores the selfishness of the two central characters (Mrs. Crater and Mr. Shiftlet). Both are interested in saving their lives, but in a material rather than spiritual sense. In that effort, Mrs. Crater gets items on her farm repaired, and Mr. Shiftlet gets his car, yet the speed at which they grasp at those material improvements and their self-interest ultimately costs them something more valuable: their innocence and the possibility of salvation. If either of the characters trained their attention on saving the life of another person, the story would have ended quite differently. Mrs. Crater would have protected her daughter from the untrustworthy man who showed up on her farm (and still secured the repairs), or Mr. Shiftlet would have achieved moral redemption by taking care of his new family (and still had use of the car).
Instead, Mr. Shiftlet is determined to remain independent. He is offended by the prospect of being married or otherwise tied down, though being alone makes him unhappy. By breaking his promises to others and violating his sense of “moral intelligence” (Paragraph 34), he shows he cannot humble himself enough to admit he needs other people or the salvation of God.
Related Titles
By Flannery O'Connor
