Question

Read the excerpt from Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink-gold hair and the half-shut sleeping eyes. Then he looked up and stared at Mr. Shiftlet. “She looks like an angel of Gawd,” he murmured. “Hitch-hiker,” Mr. Shiftlet explained. “I can’t wait. I got to make Tuscaloosa.” The boy bent over again and very carefully touched his finger to a strand of the golden hair and Mr. Shiftlet left. Which statement most accurately represents the excerpt’s larger idea? Getting what you want may not make you happy. Beauty and truth appear in unexpected places. Social isolation may lead people to act immorally. You may not get everything that you have bargained for.

Answer 1

I took the test and it was NOT "you may not get everything that you have bargained for."

Answer 2

Mary Flannery O’Connor was an American writer, she wrote two important novels, “Wise Blood” and “The Violent Bear it Away”, and many short stories.

The “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” tells the story of an old woman and her daughter who is deaf and mute and live by themselves in a farm. The old lady wants to marry her daughter and a man who arrived at the farm to help fix problems at the farm seems like the perfect candidate for the daughter. After some time the man, Mr. Shiftlet, accepts to marry Lucynell, but on one occasion he left her sleeping in a road restaurant and leaves forever.

The general idea of the novel is that of a stranger who arrives to the lives of two women and provokes a change in their lives, just as in “Good Country People”.

The larger idea of the excerpt is best represented in:

You may not get everything that you have bargained for.

Because Mr Shiftlet left the woman even though they were married.