DISCUSSION GROUP
of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own"

2     D R I N K    M I N I M U M

"She was not just the best 'woman writer' of this time and place; she expressed something secret about America, called 'the South,' with that transcendent gift for expressing the real spirit of a culture that is conveyed by those writers... who become nothing but what they see"  --Alfred Kazin    

Choose a Destination:

        Tone             Meaning                 Theme                 Setting                 Character Analysis

    The tone of "The Life You Save..." (or TLYS for short) seems to start to be one of a happy tale, yet travels into the dark and depressing at the end. O'Connor traverses the dangerous lines between happily engrossing and sullenly captivating, while most of the story you will try to understand of which holds the majority.

        Flannery O'Connor

Theme

Setting

Char Analysis

•     Lucynell Crater (old) - An old toothless women, who lives alone with her daughter, also named Lucynell Crater. She longs for a son-in-law, and
•     Mr Shiftlet - A drifter, and almost like a hobo. He arrives at the Crater place, and acting as a fix-it man, shapes things up a bit around the place. However, all he wants is the broken down car. Through a sequence of events, he marries the young Lucynell, leaves her at a place called "The Hot Spot", and drives away with the car for himself. He is a man of "moral intelligence".
•     Lucynell Crater (young) - The young daughter, who is actually said to be of about thirty years old. She is deaf and retarded, which is shown through her childish characteristcs through the story. Eventually, she is taught the word "Bird" by the decieving Mr. Shiftlet. At the end, she is left asleep at a diner 100 miles from home, as Shiftlet drives away with the car for himself.

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