What if you were given the chance to start over and do things differently? To make up for your mistakes, correct your mistakes? This idea is featured as a theme in Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," published in the Spring 1953 issue of The Kenyon Review (Kenyon College). The story is about a homeless man named "Shiftlet" who approaches an isolated, dilapidated farmhouse where "Mrs.Crater" and her mentally retarded daughter "Lucynell" live. Crater offers Shiftlet a house to stay in if he wants to do some repair work around, mostly on the car he's been eyeing. As the story progresses, Crater sees that Lucynell has an affection towards Shiftlet and tries to convince him to marry her. Shiftlet marries her because he is offered money for the honeymoon and the car. However, during their honeymoon, Shiftlet abandons Lucynell at a highway diner. While heading towards his destination, "Mobile", he picks up a young hitchhiker and begins giving him moral lessons. The hitchhiker gets angry and jumps out of the car, leaving Shiftlet to ask God to "break and wash the slime from this earth" (O'Connor). The short story "The Life You Save Could Be Your Own" can be best analyzed by examining Flannery O'Connor's background, the time period in which the story was published, the theme, irony, and symbolism used in the story . “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” can be found by examining the literary movement of that era, Christian Realism. Christian realism was developed by Reinhold Niebuhr in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The idea of ​​Christian realism is that heaven cannot be reached by those on Earth because human nature is corrupt and morally imperfect (Niebuhr). O'Connor highlights that lift... middle of paper......11/the-life-you-save-could-be-your-analysis.html>."The life you save could be yours Own." Enciclopedia.com. HighBeam and Web Search. April 17, 2014. "The Life You Save Could Be Your Summary." BookRags. BookRags and Web. April 17, 2014. .Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral man and immoral society: a study in ethics and politics. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. Print.O'Connor, Flannery. “The life you save could be your own.” Literature: American literature. Evanston: McDougal Littel, 2009. 1034-043. Press. April 08, 2014.Watson, Jerilyn. "American History: Life in the 1950s." VOA: Learning English. VOA, June 28, 2012. Web. April 17. 2014. .