Saving a life is a big deal. In many stories, tales of life-saving events contain a hero and a damsel in distress. O'Conner's story is very different from this original vision of saving a life. In O'Conner's story a man approaches an old farmhouse and begins talking to the old lady who owns it. He says he can give him work and food, but no money. He finally agrees and starts working for her while living in his old beat up car. He vows he will fix it and make it work. As he stands there, the old lady begins to talk to him about her daughter. His daughter is about sixteen years old, can't speak and always does strange things. The old lady wants Mr. Shiftlet to marry her daughter. Her argument is that she will never respond or complain to him. Once he gets the old machine to work, the old lady really starts pestering him about marrying her daughter. In the end he gives in and marries his daughter. As they headed to a cell phone she stopped at a restaurant because she thought she was hungry, but once they were seated inside she fell asleep. Then he left her asleep in the restaurant and continued on. On the way he sees a boy stopped on the side of the road who picks him up. The boy doesn't say much and Mr. Shiftlet begins to tell him things about his mother and how he left her. The boy suddenly gets angry and yells at him and then jumps out of the car with the suitcase. Then it starts raining and he runs into Mobile. In this story I think Mr. Shiftlet saves his life by working on the car and then taking it. This saves your life, just as the title predicts. In The Life You Save Might Be Your Own by Flannery O'Conner Mrs. Crater's life is fulfilled, Lucynell finds herself with the... middle of paper... I stay in the restaurant with the man who thinks he looks like an angel of God and because he is so dependent on others when he wakes up he will end up with him. If her mother had died on the farm, Lucynell would have been left alone and likely would have died soon after because she had no way to care for herself. By abandoning her, Mr. Shiftlet cleared the way for Lucynell to save her life. Throughout the entire story of The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Mr. Shiftlet is driven to obtain the car that Mrs. Crater owns, and by getting it, he ultimately 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 forever and never earning much money. Although he was very selfish, sometimes this is what is necessary in order to save his own life.