The broken-down car symbolizes the choice Shiftlet must make between redemption and sin. From the beginning, the car fascinates Shiftlet: he immediately notices the make and model, and as he talks to Mrs. Crater, he focuses on “the automobile bumper that glittered in the distance.” The car entices him because he wants to steal it—he’s never had his own car before and he’s always wanted one—but it also provides him with an opportunity for salvation. As Shiftlet works to repair the car, he takes on an almost Christlike role: he’s helping the family to live a better life by fixing what’s broken on the farm, and the story explicitly compares Shiftlet fixing the car to “rais[ing] the dead” (which was one of the miracles that Christ performed). So Shiftlet could choose the virtuous route of staying on the farm and continuing to help the family—but the car also gives Shiftlet the means to betray them, as now that it’s fixed, he can steal it for himself. In this way, the car embodies Shiftlet’s choice between virtue and sin: as he speeds away after abandoning Lucynell, he can choose to turn the car around and rescue her (the virtuous path) or he can speed away from the farm forever (the sinful path). He chooses sin, but the choice was always his.
The Car Quotes in The Life You Save May Be Your Own
Mr. Shiftlet's pale sharp glance had already passed over everything in the yard—the pump near the corner of the house and the big fig tree that three or four chickens were preparing to roost in—and had moved to a shed where he saw the square rusted back of an automobile. "You ladies drive?" he asked.
"That car ain't run in fifteen year," the old woman said. "The day my husband died, it quit running."
"Nothing is like it used to be, lady," he said. "The world is almost rotten."
"That's right," the old woman said.
With a volley of blasts it emerged from the shed, moving in a fierce and stately way. Mr. Shiftlet was in the driver's seat, sitting very erect. He had an expression of serious modesty on his face as if he had just raised the dead.
"Listen here, Mr. Shiftlet," she said, sliding forward in her chair, "you'd be getting a permanent house and a deep well and the most innocent girl in the world. You don't need no money. Lemme tell you something: there ain't any place in the world for a poor disabled friendless drifting man.”
The ugly words settled in Mr. Shiftlet's head like a group of buzzards in the top of a tree. He didn't answer at once. He rolled himself a cigarette and lit it and then he said in an even voice, "Lady, a man is divided into two parts, body and spirit.”
The old woman clamped her gums together.
"A body and a spirit,” he repeated. “The body, lady, is like a house: it don't go anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile: always on the move, always…"
There were times when Mr. Shiftlet preferred not to be alone. He felt too that a man with a car had a responsibility to others and he kept his eye out for a hitchhiker. Occasionally he saw a sign that warned: "Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own."
Mr. Shiftlet felt that the rottenness of the world was about to engulf him. He raised his arm and let it fall again to his breast. "Oh Lord!" he prayed. "Break forth and wash the slime from this earth!"
The Car Symbol Timeline in The Life You Save May Be Your Own
