In the story by Flannery O’Connor The Life you Save May be Your Own, a young drifter abducts a woman he has recently married to leave her at a gas station and drive away with her mother’s car, a gift for their wedding.
As he drives away, he reads a sign that says, “Drive carefully. The Life you save may be your own.”
He is among the class of citizens now for whom this sign was written. From Man with no Automobile, to Man with Automobile, whose intended philanthropy toward other lives by driving well is rewarded with a reminder that it may be himself, in the end, that he saves.
This ending is so multifaceted and poignant, because, despite clearly reaping the benefits of a message meant for conscientious citizens, of which he is not one, yet still, even as a scoundrel, he is human enough to feel entitled to the gratification. And we feel human enough, as readers, to grant him the gift.
The “moment of grace” O’Connor talks about as grounding all of her stories, is present here in the last sentiment. Among all his strengths and connivings, Tom Shiftlet, is weak enough to need to feel endorsement and pride. And it is the ironic twist that brings this feeling about by means of the car he has just stolen from a weak old woman and her weaker daughter.
There are layers upon layers here. Like a mound of gradient planes. There is a victim and a predator, yes. But there is also heart and heartache. There is knowing trickery and the surprise of accidental elation. Just as she is at the mercy of his scheme, he is at the mercy of the sign that puts him in his place even as it presents him with the illusion of his own importance.
Like the fake story that wins you the Honors of Honesty contest, Tom Shiftlet uses a car that isn’t his to reap a reward that isn’t his. A reward that isn’t his but for which there is a spot in his character nevertheless. The story seems to say that perhaps we could all be scoundrels if we had the characteristics this man has and certainly, even scoundrels need affirmation that they are honorable.
National fables and cinema illustrate the way in which a culture as a whole upholds the tenets of moral goodness despite the fact that many of its citizens must necessarily be engaged in work that is less pure. No one likes a movie in which the scoundrel wins. Unless the scoundrel is in fact the good guy and only giving those who prefer to use their skills for evil a taste of their own superior medicine. But, basically, both the guy who just swindled an old woman out of her life’s savings for a not-so-very-good car and the man who saved his neighbor’s child from drowning today want the good guy in the movie to win.
And so does Tom Shiftlet. He knows what a good guy is and now, thanks to his new automobile, he can feel like one. Never mind the means to that end. There must be a reference to this too, in the Psychology 101 book on my desk, but righteousness is ever righteous. Self-serving, self-amplifying righteousness sticks to us like a candy stick and we collect it as we go along a road down which the acts of cruelty we perform are miraged over with signs that say “Thank you for your generous donation. You are he who makes a difference in the higher orders.”
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Some day in the near distant future, humans will have the opportunity to control their own population dynamics scientifically. Not only physiologically but socially. There will be a movement, a concerted, centralized effort to strive for future generations of people who are capable of fulfilling their entire potential. People who are the perfect scoundrel or the perfect angel and have no reservations or no drive to be a little more one or less of the other. People on whom the “Life You Save” sign will be lost. Then, literature will become boring and disappear next to its own moment of grace. But we won’t know it.
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Works
O'Connor, Flannery. "The Life You Save May be Your Own." var. collections
O'Connor, Flannery. "On Her Own Work." Mystery and Manners. Eds. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Noonday. 1969 (1957). 118.
