The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Read the full text of Flannery O'Connor's The Life You Save May Be Your Own online.

This second jump into the world of Finding Faith in Fiction has led us to the short – and I mean short – story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor. Having been written by a Southern, Catholic author, this piece contains many familiar themes and ideas, but buried in the sneaky world of her comical writing style and quips. This story, ultimately about how humans cannot achieve God’s grace alone, finds itself following Mr. Tom T. Shiftlet – a one and a half armed man too thin to threaten anyone, and his encounters with the Crater family – an old widowed woman and her developmentally challenged daughter, both named Lucynell.

Introducing Shiftlet with his broken body shaped like a crooked cross and offering his services as a carpenter, the story establishes his role as a false Christ figure. The Craters offer him safe lodging and food at their run down farm in return for fixing up the place. Along with the many repairs he does around the home (including teaching little Lucynell her first word “bird”), he also finds himself eyeing and fixing the old car on the farm, which hasn’t run in 15 years – since the day Mr. Crater died. Old Woman Crater find herself eyeing him as a potential son-in-law, finally keeping a man around – the first since the day Mr. Crater died. As these two negotiate the daughter and the car, there are many opportunities throughout the story for these characters, broken in body and soul, to receive the redemption and healing that Christ has to offer.

This story approaches the idea of redemption and grace from two angles. First, as the title hints, sacrifice for another person can often bring peace and stability. If both the Old Woman and Shiftlet would not be so focused on their own ambitions, perhaps the farm could have a whole family and Tom Shiftlet might not have to be so shiftless (or shifty!). Secondly, O’Connor’s smart use of the surrounding nature reminds us that we are in a world that grows and moves forward in time without our consent. We need God’s grace to achieve our goals and to live good and happy lives. Embedding much southern culture, even an ‘angel of Gawd’, this story invites us to reevaluate how we are saying ‘yes’ to Christ and how we may be passing over some of the greatest, if not quietest, blessings He has presented to us.