"The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by O'Connor

O'Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" has proven difficult to fit into the usual critical categories and terms. The story presents the reader with a powerful tableau of primitive figures from the unconscious, frozen in a struggle that cannot be resolved. O'Connor's grotesques are striking projections of archetypal figures playing out the dramas that engage the modern psyche. O'Connor has lavished on it a wealth of irony and carefully observed realistic detail, but much of the power of the story lies in its clear delineation of archetypal motifs.

By stripping ...