The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O’Connor – I have read this marvelous short story eleven years ago, and this is what I thought https://realini.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-life-you-save-can-be-your-own-by.html - 10 out of 10

 

The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O’Connor – I have read this marvelous short story eleven years ago, and this is what I thought https://realini.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-life-you-save-can-be-your-own-by.html

 

10 out of 10

 

The Life You Save May Be Your Own is part of the A Good Man Is Hard To find Collection https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/05/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery.html which starts with the story that names the compilation, in which we learn about the tragedy of a family, brought in large part by the…grandmother

 

This old lady is first confused over the address which she wants her son to drive to, this being no reason to accuse her of anything as dramatic as the execution of her own, but then, when they meet with The Misfit, a vile gangster, she tells the killer that she recognized him, to the exasperation of her own son, who saw the danger

This again can be explained by the age of the woman, her lack of understanding, perhaps a low EQ https://realini.blogspot.com/2013/08/emotional-intelligence-by-daniel-goleman.html emotional intelligence is said (maybe even demonstrated) to be twice as important as IQ, and she may not have seen the consequences

 

Nevertheless, once it become clear that The Misfit and his hoodlums start murdering the son, then the wife and children, the grandmother appears to me to be concerned too much with her fate – ‘you wouldn’t shoot an old lady’, and then moaning along these lines, as if she is too concerned with her future…

Force Majeure https://realini.blogspot.com/2017/08/note-on-force-majeure-written-and.html comes to mind, wherein father, mother and two children are sitting on this terrace in the mountains, where they have come for a skiing vacation, when an avalanche seems to be so near, as to engulf them all, and the father…runs away

 

The Grandmother does not exactly do that, but she does bring the snow ball on the family – just a sick joke – with The Life You Save, we have a different territory, with another mature woman, Lucynell Crater, who is sitting with her daughter, also Lucynell, when a stranger comes walking on the road to their farm, Mr. Shiftlet is his name

He is missing an arm, looks like a tramp, and somehow, may be ‘a match’ for the daughter, her mother says that she (the young one) is fifteen, or sixteen, but she is close to thirty, and she cannot speak, until the man teaches her to say ‘bird’…he is invited to stay on, they do not have the money to pay him, but he could work

He will get free accommodation, if wants to help with the farm, and the stranger does that, he remarks on the car they have there, an old one, but he says ‘they used to know how to make them, now they have one man, for each screw, and you have to pay them all, that is why they are so expensive’ – words to that effect…

 

Some things never change, we hear this in the present, they do not make cars, phones, anything like in the good old days…I wonder how The Life You Save May Be Your Own connects with the important theme of religion, and the previous story in the collection – The River, wherein we have this small boy and his dramatic end

He is taken to see this healer- preacher to The River, which we know is the place for baptism, that can take place in the church, but also wherever there is a body of water – indeed, some denominations would prefer the outdoors to the classic means which they reject…there is a variety of offers now, as we can read…

 

In The Economist, there is a wonderful article on God TM, where we see that the religious outfits have made some 374 billion dollars, more than the revenues of Microsoft and Google combined (one of the two major technology players) they do not pay taxes, and from an economist’s perspective, they work as platforms

When Martin Luther came along, a monopoly was broken, customer choice was increased, and prices for services dropped, with the elimination of the indulgences, the pardons that the pope, the Catholic Church had started to offer for money, you could sin, and then offer down payment to go to heaven, putting it bluntly…

 

Yes, I may see some similarity, at least in the way I look at this and The River, for in the latter, the poor boy is not saved, he is drowned in the water, and here, we think that maybe the tramp and the girl who is challenged have found each other, God maybe worked in his mysterious ways and there is bliss for them too

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth’, or was it the kingdom of heaven, however, our most brilliant mind, Andrei Plesu, has a different take on these meek, it does not refer to those who literally have little, it is more complex than that https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2023/11/toleranta-si-intolerabilulcriza-unui.html

 

The mother wants the stranger to marry her daughter (without hindsight, I would wonder why) only Shiflet is…shifty, perhaps his name is not a ‘coincident’, after all, we find in According To Mark by Penelope Lively that the author is God, he or she decides who lives, what happens and everything else in his domain

Eventually, after saying he needs money to marry, for he wants to take his wife (she could be a duchess) to a hotel, for a meal, and he has nothing, so they negotiate, Mrs. Crater offers fifteen dollars – maybe a few thousand in adjusted terms – and then they settle for $ 17.5 and at the restaurant, the groom abandons the bride, takes the car and then there is another unexpected clash with a boy that is taken for a ride…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”