The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Flannery O’Connor was born in Georgia and spent her youth in the South. With her keen skill for observation, O’Connor wrote about human behavior, particularly human foibles, and her writing became known as part of the Southern Gothic school—a group that also includes Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Harper Lee. These writers draw on the European Gothic literary tradition to critique society in the South—specifically, the hypocrisy of southerners and the moral decay of the era.

The South was built on slavery, creating the region’s paradoxical character. Some people lived in beautiful mansions and practiced elaborate manners to distinguish their economic status as “ladies and gentlemen.” Another group lived in squalor and were bought and sold as animals, severely overworked, and abused when they aroused displeasure. While the slaveholders presented themselves as refined, educated, and moral, they used violence to maintain power over the humans they kept in bondage for personal profit.

Even after the American Civil War, this dichotomy persisted and, in some ways, worsened. In the post-Reconstruction era, African Americans could theoretically vote and slavery was illegal, but society was deeply segregated. White people continued to brutalize Black people politically, economically, and, in many instances, physically. The wealthy also continued to manipulate poorer white people, fostering racism against the Black population to ensure the two groups did not join forces to demand economic reform. Southerners’ façade of being morally upright covered sinister and brutal behavior.

In O’Connor’s story, this hypocrisy comes across in the way Mr. Shiftlet sanctimoniously criticizes the immorality of others, claiming that his mother taught him the “right” way to live and treat women, but then commits actions that are unconscionable. Mrs. Crater also knows that she wants Mr. Shiftlet for a son-in-law—her way of keeping an unpaid handyman—but is not upfront with him, seeking to manipulate him into the marriage.

Southern Gothic writing often focuses on the “grotesque” nature of everyday people in the South, sometimes giving characters physical traits intended to suggest spiritual sickness. O’Connor’s characters often have notable physical deformities, such as Mr. Shiftlet’s missing arm and Lucynell’s mental and physical challenges.