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Human Morality In The Eyes Of Flannery O Connor

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Artis Griffin Mrs. Horn English 11 26 January 2015 Human Morality in the Eyes of Flannery O’Connor Do humans have questionable morals? Flannery O’Connor proves that sometimes humans do in her short story, “The Life You Save May Be You Own”. This short story is about how a stranger named Mr. Shiftlet meets an old woman named Mrs. Crater and her only daughter Lucynell. Both Mrs. Crater and Mr. Shiftlet are somewhat corrupt human beings, but Lucynell is pure and innocent. O’Connor uses images, symbols, and characterization to reveal that human beings sometimes have questionable morals. Flannery O’Connor uses many examples of characterization to reveal the questionable morality of humans. For example, when O’Connor states Mrs. Crater true reasons for keeping a total stranger like Mr. Shiftlet around. After Mr. Shiftlet taught Young Lucynell to say the word bird, Mrs. Crater was described as being “ravenous for a son in law.” This shows that Mrs. Crater desperately wants a son-in-law no matter what the consequences. In this case, the consequence is leaving her only daughter in the hands of a stranger. Another example would be when Mrs. Crater describes young Lucynell to Mr. Shiftlet as “the sweetest girl in the world.” Mrs. Crater only made Lucynell look good to Mr. Shiftlet so that he would want to take her …show more content…

For example, the description of Mr. Shiftlet when he first arrives at the Crater household. He is described as a forming a “crooked cross”. If it were a straight cross, this would represent that he is a good person like Jesus. However, his cross was crooked, so he is represented as a bad person. Another example is how he is described when he smiles. When Mrs. Crater tells Mr. Shiftlet that she will give him money for paint, his smile “stretched like a weary snake”. This shows that his main intensions are evil. This is because snakes are usually used to represent

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