The central action of “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” is a battle of wits between Mr. Shiftlet and Lucynell Crater–Shiftlet angling to get the old woman’s car, the old woman manipulating Shiftlet to marry her daughter. It is tempting to call their mental chess match, with its measures and countermeasures, a duel of competing world views. Mr. Shiftlet presents himself as a philosopher, constantly steering the conversation toward life’s imponderables. The old woman is a pragmatist, earth-bound and world-weary, the kind of person whom you can’t put anything past.
But even if these two characters compete with one another, I’m not sure their world views do. Both Mr. Shiftlet’s philosophizing and Lucynell Crater’s no-nonsense materialism are both ways of avoiding any claims that God might have on their lives. Mr. Shiftlet’s restlessness is not that of a man in search of truth, but the restlessness of a man running from truth. His favorite topic, the theme of his song, is unknowability.