Student Question
In "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," what does Mr. Shiftlet discover in the shed?
Quick answer:
Mr. Shiftlet discovers a 1928 or '29 Ford automobile in Mrs. Crater's shed. Although it hasn't run in years, he claims he can fix it. After acquiring a fan belt and gasoline, he successfully drives the car. Despite professing spiritual priorities, Mr. Shiftlet is deeply interested in the car and eventually marries Mrs. Crater's daughter, Lucynell, for money, only to abandon her and escape with the car to Mobile.
Mr. Shiftlet discovers "a 1928 or '29" Ford automobile in the shed of Mrs. Crater's property. Mrs. Crater claims the car hasn't run in fifteen years but Mr. Shiftlet says he can get it running. He sleeps in the car while he is fixing things around the place. When he raises the hood of the car he brags about how the car was "built in the days when cars were really built." He tells Mrs. Crater that he just needs some money for a fan belt and the car would run. Sure enough, after walking into town and purchasing a fan belt and some gasoline he is soon seen driving the car out of the shed. All the while, Mrs. Crater is eager for Mr. Shiftlet to marry her deaf daughter Lucynell. She promises Mr. Shiftlet that she will give him the money to paint the car and to take...
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Lucynell to a hotel and buy her a meal if he will marry the girl. They settle on seventeen dollars and fifty cents. Mr. Shiftlet takes the money and the girl in the new car but dumps her at a roadside cafe and takes off in the car to Mobile.
O'Conner suggests throughout the story that Mr. Shiftlet is very much interested in the car. It is one of the things he notices on the property when he first arrives:
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 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.
And again, a little later in the story, he notices the car as Mrs. Crater talks about how she wants Lucynell to be married, but that the man who married her would have to stay on the property:
Mr. Shiftlet's eye in the darkness was focused on a part of the automobile bumper that glittered in the distance.
Even as he claims money is not important and that spiritual matters are what he cares about most, Mr. Shiftlet ends up stealing Mrs. Crater's money and the automobile.