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.