The setting for this story is in the 1940’s on a desolate old farm in of repair and in the middle of nowhere.
There is a big expanse of sky adding to the loneliness and isolation. There are three mountains against the dark blue sky visited off and on by the moon and various planets. An old lady sits on her front porch with her daughter watching the sunset. The theme of this story is one that that has been going on for centuries, it is the classic good against evil and the tendencies that people have to satisfy there on needs above everyone else’s or to say it another way, The evil that I would not do that I do and the good that I would do that I do not.
In the story Mr. Shiftlet starts intends to right by the old lady, Mrs. Crater, and make the necessary repairs to the farm. We tell this where it says “” Lady” he said slowly, ” there’s some men that some things mean more to them than money. (977). He also taught Lucynell, who was completely deaf to say the word bird.
Mr. Shiftlet is shown as a selfish self-serving person only out to satisfy himself. He after marries Lucynell he comes out of the courthouse he says ” That didn’t satisfy me none.
(981). In the end Mr. Shiftlet feels so much guilty about what he has done to Lucynell but feels he cannot turn back. The satisfaction he feels with himself is short lived for getting a car and he depressed. He tries to make amends by picking up a hitchhiker, a boy. I the conversation with the hitchhiker Mr.
Shiftlet remembers his mother, “ an angel of gawd… he took from heaven and giver to me, and I left her”(983).
The boy replied, “ You go to the devil !. he cried. My old woman is a fleabag and yours is a stinking pole cat. “(983). As Mr.
Shiftlet hears an approaching storm he says “ Oh Lord! He prayed. Break forth and wash the slime from this earth ! “(983) Here he wishes to be washed from the face of the earth for what he has done, preying on an innocent, Lucynell.
