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The Life You Save May Be Your Own Short Story Summary

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"The Life You Save May Be Your Own" is a short story written by the author Flannery O'Connor. It is also one of the ten stories in her short story collection which was published in 1955. O’Connor uses humor in this story just as she does in her other stories to tell the tale of Mr. Shiftlet’s journey through life and to explain the changes in his character while living with a major disadvantage. One evening Mr. Shiftlet arrives at the desolate Crater farm in hopes to find a place to work. While doing so he ends up striking a deal that allows him to live on the farm in exchange for fixing up the Crater’s place. At this point, Shiftlet is truly in search of work and nothing more, but the tides are soon going to shift. While bargaining with Mrs. …show more content…

“The Life You Save” may well offer ground where a community might take root, but that plot is tended by an unfortunately all-too-dusty little trinity” (Karnes 123). This dusty trinity she talks about are the three main characters that are now filled with greed. The greed Mr. Shiftlet shows about the car, and the greed that Mrs. Crater shows over her daughter are the culprits that make O’Connor’s story take a downward trajectory (Karnes 123). At first, the Crater farm had an opportunity to prosper with a family, but due to greed, all communal possibilities derail (Karnes 123). Mr. Shiftlet spent the majority of his time working on the car (Clasby 513) which caused him to forget about his important duties on the farm. All three of “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” characters have deficient bodies, which is caused by their own personal defects, and deficient minds, which is caused by the greed that is allowed to take root (Karnes 123). When Mr. Shiftlet first arrives at the Crater farm, he is made out to be a Christ-like figure, but as Mr. Shiftlet turns to face the sun his shadow makes what is seen to be a crooked cross (O’Connor). This is an early sign that Mr. Shiftlet is not the savior that he is first made out to be, but that he is instead a person that will let greed get the best of him. Karnes writes, “Here, human need degenerates into a cancerous greed that is revealed in O’Connor’s incisive descriptions of incomplete bodies, selfish motives, and desperate actions” (Karnes 126). Ultimately, the needs of each one of these characters overtook their want to do the right thing which allowed greed to set

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