The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Flannery O’Connor is from the American South, which influences her writing. Are the values and cultures of people from all parts of the United States the same? What could influence people from one region to think or behave differently from those in another region? How does where a writer is from influence where they set their stories or the ideas they write about?

Teaching Suggestion: Understanding how location may influence a writer’s choice of theme, characterization, and setting may help the students feel more grounded in O’Connor’s work, since her fiction is so intimately tied to Southern culture, especially in her sharp critique of its failings and keen chronicles of behavior and beliefs. O’Connor is part of the Southern Gothic tradition in American literature, influences of which can still be observed today in film and books, and she shares that tradition with other writers such as William Faulkner and Carson McCullers. Understanding the origins and common characteristics of this tradition and its impact on American literature will provide students with the context in which to analyze the story.

• Watch this 1972 episode of Firing Line on the Southern Imagination, featuring an interview in which Southern writers Eudora Welty and Walker Percy offer their perspectives on the influence of place on their writing. (If a shorter excerpt is useful, the first 15 minutes focus on the general physical area of the Southern US and features of Southern life, but the first 30 minutes also address deeper issues, including racial conflict.)
• The 9-minute YouTube documentary “Southern Gothic Project” defines and explores Southern Gothic with examples from modern films and TV shows as well as classic writers in the genre. (Content Warning: Note that the documentary includes several historical images of the Ku Klux Klan in photo montages.)
• Read this article from The Guardian for an accessible overview (by way of a bicycle metaphor) of key elements of the Southern Gothic and its universal appeal.

2. O’Connor was a strongly religious person, and her work reveals how her Christian faith colored her vision of people and society. In what ways do people show their faith or religion through words, appearance, symbols, actions, or something else? Building on these ideas, how do you think writers might also reveal religious themes in their work?

Teaching Suggestion: Introducing the importance of religion in O’Connor’s life and allowing students time to consider how religion is represented in the world provides a window of analysis for her story. From students’ responses, you might build a discussion about symbolism, characterization (actions, words, appearance, etc.), setting, imagery, motif, and more.

• Watch this 8-minute video clip from PBS about Flannery O’Connor and her role as a Christian writer in the United States.
• In this 54-minute video, Dr. Jennifer Frey from the University of South Carolina delivers a lecture to the Lumen Christi Institute in Chicago that provides an engaging introduction to O’Connor’s early life and history, including the ways in which her Catholic faith shaped her and set her apart. (If a shorter excerpt is useful, the first 20 minutes focus on O’Connor’s early life and history.)

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the story.

Is there a place that you feel especially connected to? This place can be a country, city, town, house, room, or anywhere you feel helps identify you. Do you think this place has shaped the way you view the world or the sense of culture or community that you have? What makes this place special to you or your family? If you’re unsure, imagine what such a place might be like. What would make it special or defining for you? Why?

Teaching Suggestion: To build on the idea of place and its significance in O’Connor’s story, consider sharing photos of her family farm, where she wrote many of her stories. Having a visual sense of the physical landscape surrounding O’Connor may lead students to consider the connection they feel to their own environment or share their own appreciation of a specific location. Making such a connection will further bridge the way for students to access the story with a context for the aesthetic that permeates O’Connor’s work.

• Review this photo essay of Andalusia, the family farm where O’Connor lived the last 13 years of her life.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students who are visual learners or who have artistic abilities may be encouraged to create another kind of visual representation (such as a drawing, collage, or digital slide) of a location/place that they feel (or imagine that they would feel) connected to. During the class discussion, these students may show their visual creations and provide a verbal description of the place they depicted and why it is significant to them.