German author, Eckhart Tolle once said, “To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.” The theme of one gaining salvation and grace through ones actions is evident in many of Flannery O’Conner’s short stories including, The Life That You Save May Be Your Own. O’Conner wrote her short stories so that her characters would come to learn the truth about themselves through an epiphany of self realization and all that they have done wrong and so that each person who was lying to get what they wanted and had hit rock bottom would have a chance at salvation and grace. Though not everyone in O’Conner’s short shotries accepts this salvation and grace. In Flannery O’Conner’s The Life That You Save May Be Your Own, Mr. Shiftlet denies his newly offered salvations even after having his epiphany. In Flannery O’Conner’s The Life That You Save May Be Your Own, Mr. Shiftlet was a character who manipulated his situation to benefit himself by lying to those around him and eventually leading him to have an epiphany of his wrong doings and was offered salvation. When Mr. Shiftlet arrived at the Crater family’s house he had every intention of …show more content…
Shiftlet saw a could the shape of a turnip start to descend from the sky making him feel as if all the rottenness of the world was about to engulf him and he proceeded to shout “Oh Lord! Break forth and wash the slime from this earth” (156). When Mr. Shiftlet starts to speak to God he is given a chance to reach salvation and grace as the clouds darken and rain begins to fall as if it were going to wash all of his sins away; however, Mr. Shiftlet does not embrace this salvation. Instead, “Very quickly he stepped on the gas and with his stump sticking out the window he raced the galloping shower into Mobile” (156). Thus showing Mr. Shiftlet running from his salvation and grace rather than accepting