“The Life You Save May Be Your Own” is full of broken objects and broken people. Tom Shiftlet, a drifting carpenter, fixes up a broken car on the Crater farm. Mrs. Crater is missing her teeth, her daughter Lucynell is mentally disabled, and their farm is full of broken objects—even though it’s also a respite from a broken, sinful world. Shiftlet himself is missing an arm, but it’s his spirit that is truly broken. He’s able to repair things on the farm without a problem, but he can’t heal his spirit—as soon as he fixes the car, he deceives Mrs. Crater so he can steal it, abandoning Lucynell in the process. The story suggests that brokenness is a natural, inevitable state for humanity, but that humanity still has an obligation to repair things whenever we can.
From the beginning, the story is full of people and things that are depicted as flawed or broken. One of the first things readers learn about Shiftlet is that he’s missing an arm. Likewise, the story quickly reveals that Lucynell can’t speak. Even the able-bodied Mrs. Crater is depicted as old and worn down—she can’t chew the gum Shiftlet offers her because she has no teeth. Right away, imperfection is the default state of the characters. The clearest example of the brokenness motif, though, is the Craters’ old car. The car hasn’t run in 15 years, having died the same day Mrs. Crater’s husband did. Not only is the car’s brokenness tied to a sense of grief, it also literally keeps Mrs. Crater and Lucynell from moving on from their “desolate” farm. This state of brokenness seems to apply to the whole world, according to Shiftlet—the world is “almost rotten,” most women these days are “trash,” mass-produced cars break down easily. Modern, industrialized life is depicted as sinful and degraded.
In the face of this brokenness, the story suggests that the work of fixing things is not just helpful, but spiritual. Shiftlet’s role as a traveling carpenter who agrees to fix things around the farm (the steps, the fence, etc.) creates a parallel with another traveling carpenter: Christ. The clearest example of this is in the story’s framing of fixing the broken car as a miracle, “as if [Shiftlet] had just raised the dead.” Christ also raised the dead, so this once again casts Shiftlet as a Christ figure. A third way in which the story associates Shiftlet with Christ is Shiftlet’s role as a teacher (Christ himself taught through his ministry). Shiftlet is able to teach Lucynell to say the word “bird,” the first time she’s ever spoken, which is its own kind of miracle.
Eventually, though, it becomes clear that Shiftlet’s Christlike good works aren’t enough to fully redeem him—something remains broken in his spirit. Shiftlet chooses to steal the car he has so virtuously fixed up, abandoning Lucynell at a roadside diner in the process. His act of repairing the car therefore becomes a literal vehicle for his own selfishness and cruelty as he drives away. By the end, Shiftlet feels as though “the rottenness of the world [is] about to engulf him,” a callback to his earlier assessment of the world as an almost rotten place. He asks God to “wash the slime from this earth” as a rain cloud approaches, but instead of being washed clean by the rain (like a baptism), he steps on the gas. The car, which he uses to race the shower, stops him from being cleansed and healed.
The world’s inherent brokenness is never resolved in the story. Acts of repair are treated as virtuous and holy, but good works also seem intertwined with sin. The car embodies this tension, as Shiftlet’s willingness and ability to fix it is Christlike, and yet once the car comes back to life, it enables Shiftlet’s worst tendencies: he steals the car, abandons Lucynell, and steps on the gas to avoid his own conscience. In this way, good works alone are not an escape from sin—that would require conscience and integrity, a kind of brokenness that the story presents no way of fixing.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Brokenness and Repair ThemeTracker
Brokenness and Repair Quotes in The Life You Save May Be Your Own
He swung both his whole and his short arm up slowly so that they indicated an expanse of sky and his figure formed a crooked cross. The old woman watched him with her arms folded across her chest as if she were the owner of the sun, and the daughter watched, her head thrust forward and her fat helpless hands hanging at the wrists.
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.
He had patched the front and back steps, built a new hog pen, restored a fence, and taught Lucynell, who was completely deaf and had never said a word in her life, to say the word "bird." The big rosy-faced girl followed him everywhere, saying "Burrttddt ddbirrrttdt," and clapping her hands. The old woman watched from a distance, secretly pleased. She was ravenous for a son-in-law.
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.
In the darkness, Mr. Shiftlet's smile stretched like a weary snake waking up by a fire.
