The Life You Save May Be Your Own Pride Quotes

Words: 1045
Pages: 5

After World War II, the people of the United States longed to return to their former days without economic strife and violence. While attempting to regain their state of normalcy, some authors chose to depict the time of worry through the writing of short stories. As St. Cyril of Jerusalem said, “The dragon is by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the father of souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” In relation to this quote, contemporary authors developed stories containing a central theme of invasion and focused on how characters use pride, vanity, and greed to respond to an invasion or temptation. This attraction towards temptation is demonstrated in “A Good Man is Hard …show more content…
When Mr. Shiftlet first enters the lives of the Crater’s, it is stated that he “had a look of composed dissatisfaction as if he understood life thoroughly.” Mr. Shiftlet’s strong belief in his intellectual power and superiority over others foreshadows a miserable end for the Crater women. All of Mr. Shiftlet’s considerate actions revolve around his greedy desire for a car. Once in possession of the beloved car, his accustomed prideful ways and lack of morals make it easy for him to strand his new wife, Lucynell, approximately one hundred miles from home. At the end of the story, Mr. Shiftlet faces the inevitable fate brought upon by the symbolic dragon talked about by St. Cyril of Jerusalem. While on his journey to reach “the father of souls,” Mr. Shiftlet has placed his spiritual life in danger, by continuing down the same road as numerous cheating people. He realizes that his pride has been overthrown when making an attempt to pray to God. He prays for the slime of the earth to be washed away; shortly after his thought to be heartfelt prayer, he is engulfed within a storm and continuing rain crashes against his car. With this ending, Flannery O’Conner directly expressed how she felt the people consumed by pride and greed should end