In “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” drifter Tom Shiftlet arrives at Mrs. Crater’s farm offering work in exchange for food and lodging. Shiftlet quickly gains Mrs. Crater’s trust, but he has evil intentions: he’s scheming to fix up the family’s car and take it for himself. Shiftlet’s time with Mrs. Crater and her disabled daughter, Lucynell, offers him an opportunity for redemption: he could stay with the family, marry Lucynell, and live a purposeful life in a place associated with virtue and holiness. Still, he ultimately chooses evil when he abandons Lucynell at a restaurant and takes off with the fixed-up car. Throughout the story, grace and redemption are always available to Shiftlet, but his choice to reject virtue shows that it’s up to each person to decide whether or not they’ll be redeemed.
From the beginning, the story associates the Crater home with redemption and suggests that, if Shiftlet were to stay there permanently, he would receive God’s grace. For instance, the dazzling sunset as Shiftlet first approaches the farm inspires him to raise his arms to the sky in the shape of a cross, which suggests that the sunset brings him closer to God. (Christianity holds that Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross—itself an act of God’s grace—redeemed humankind.) And since the sunset is visible at the Craters’ every night, staying there in the presence of God seems like a virtuous choice. Furthermore, the farm provides Shiftlet with valuable work to do, work that aligns him with Christ. He’s doing carpentry, just like Christ did, and fixing everything that’s broken on the farm resembles Christ’s work of resurrecting the dead. Lastly, Lucynell herself is the story’s embodiment of holiness. Lucynell is innocent, sweet, and she literally resembles an angel; she’s fair-haired with blue eyes (as angels have often been depicted in Western art), and the waiter at the restaurant describes her explicitly as an “angel of Gawd.” Lucynell clearly has affection for Shiftlet and flourishes with his companionship, such as when he teaches her to say “bird” for the first time. Shiftlet’s opportunity to be her companion is a chance at grace—he could stay on the farm doing his Christlike labor and watching the holy sunsets alongside his angelic bride.
Despite his fixation on stealing the car, Shiftlet does seem drawn to staying at the Crater household and being redeemed. For example, when he remarks that he’d like to “see the sun go down every evening like God made it to do,” he’s simultaneously appreciating the beauty of the farm and demonstrating his desire to live a virtuous life. In addition, his work for the Craters seems to satisfy him; he tells Mrs. Crater how he’s able to fix up the farm because he has a “personal interest in it.” This is certainly a veiled reference to his plan to steal the car, but it also seems like a backhanded confession that he actually likes living there. Finally, he develops a special connection with Lucynell, showing that it’s possible for him to grow closer to God. During his time on the farm, they seem inseparable—she follows him around while he works, he’s tender with her (helping her up when she falls, for instance), and he’s even able to teach her to speak for the first time. All of this shows that Shiftlet is faced with a choice: he can either give into temptation and steal the car, or he can choose redemptive life in front of him.
When Shiftlet steals the car, he’s given a final opportunity for redemption: his emotional crisis as he drives through the storm. In this moment, Shiftlet has already chosen evil; he has abandoned Lucynell at a restaurant and driven away with the family car, clearly not intending to return. But his conscience pains him, showing that he’s still not irredeemable, even after everything he’s done. For one, he reflects that “a man with a car ha[s] a responsibility to others,” so he looks to pick up a hitchhiker as he drives. Since he’s just told the waiter at the restaurant that Lucynell was a hitchhiker, his desire to help a hitchhiker now implies that that he wants to atone for what he did to her.
Furthermore, when he does pick up a hitchhiker, he gives the man an odd lecture about how good his mother was and how sad he was to have left her, crying all the while. Significantly, he describes his mother as an “angel of Gawd”—the exact language that the waiter used to describe Lucynell. This lecture has nothing to do with the hitchhiker’s situation and seemingly nothing to do with Shiftlet’s own mother (whom he’s barely mentioned in the story), so it’s plausible to think that he’s really talking about Lucynell, expressing his remorse for leaving her at the restaurant. This remorse shows that Shiftlet is finally vulnerable to redemption—he’s so upset over what he’s done that he’s weeping in front of a stranger, and he seems to be questioning his choice to drive away from the Craters, as his car is now “barely moving,” suggesting that he might turn back.
This final crisis helps explain the meaning of the billboard that Shiftlet saw a few miles back: “Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own.” It’s his driving that’s his path to salvation—if he turns the car around, then he’ll save his soul. In this moment, feeling overwhelmed by “rottenness” and praying that God will “wash the slime from this earth,” Shiftlet seems like he’s about to make the virtuous choice. But he doesn’t; he steps on the gas and races away. At no point in the story was Shiftlet irrevocably doomed to sin and damnation; he could always choose to redeem himself. And the story’s ending suggests that maybe—despite choosing evil yet again—he still can.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Free Will and Redemption ThemeTracker
Free Will and Redemption 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.
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.
The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink-gold hair and the half-shut sleeping eyes. Then he looked up and stared at Mr. Shiftlet. "She looks like an angel of Gawd," he murmured.
"Hitchhiker," Mr. Shiftlet explained. "I can't wait. I got to make Tuscaloosa."
The boy bent over again and very carefully touched his finger to a strand of the golden hair and Mr. Shiftlet left.
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!"
