The Life You Save Might Be Your Own Literary Analysis

Roses are red, violets are blue, but O’Connor’s tale paints romance a new hue. If you are reading a story that ends with ‘they all lived happily ever after’ you can bet it’s not the read The Life You Save Might Be Your Own. The author shows us that love doesn’t guarantee happiness and in fact it could curse us. Through this ironic mockery of love, Flannery O'Connor illustrates a new style of this genre: a fairy tale aways from a fairy tale, average looking lovers, a greedy mother, and no, there is no hero nor happily ever after. First and foremost, there was no true love within the entire story. If you look into it deeply enough, you can see how the characters strive for it, but deep down they never could achieve it. When you look at Mr. Shiftlet, he had the potential to love but couldn’t do it. He talks about his morals of …show more content…
For starters, our lady damsel wasn’t a goddess on earth, she was rather a plump and older woman with a disability. She was described as bright, gentle, and an angel from God by O’Connor which is typical for the starring lady of romances. On the contrary, she is unable to communicate with others through words, nor can she hear them- she’s deaf. Usually females are in full health or have minor deficiencies in this genre of love, not with a full on disability as Lucynell. In addition to this, the old lady, mother of Lucynell, is a selfish mother who really doesn’t care about who her daughter spends the rest of her life with. In the beginning of the story she says “I wouldn’t give her up for nothing on earth”. She later turns around on her own word, disregards her morals, and auctions her off to a stranger. She lies about her age, wants her to learn flirtatious words like sugarpie, and does everything to make sure they are married in the eyes of the law. This entire time, she never considered how her daughter may feel or how honest the man she married was; he ended up abandoning