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“It’s nothing so sweet,” Mr. Shiftlet continued, “as a boy’s mother. She taught him his first prayers . . . she give him love when no other would, she told him what was right and what wasn’t, and she seen that he done the right thing. Son, ” he said, “I never rued a day . . . like the one I rued when I left that old mother of mine.”

Shiftlet insists throughout the story how important his mother was to him and that she taught him many lessons. However, over and over throughout the story, he demonstrates that, despite the teachings he claims to have received, he makes choices that contradict those lessons. Despite having been taught clear distinctions between right and wrong, he makes decisions that indicate that he is choosing the wrong way. He says that he rues the day that he left his mother, but there must have been some good reason for him to have learned these lessons from her and consistently make choices that show that he is ignoring these lessons. It appears to be significant that he has just taken advantage of a mother and daughter, literally betraying the newest mother figure in his life. Shiftlet has a complex psychology, with several dichotomous attitudes toward his mother and what she tried to teach him, and the reader can only absorb the fact of them, while O’Connor refuses to provide an explanation, resulting in a complex, devilish character.

“One that can’t talk,’ she continued, “can’t sass you back or use foul language. That’s the kind [of woman] for you to have. Right there,” and she pointed to Lucynell sitting cross-legged in her chair, holding both feet in her hands.

A tone of desperation from the old woman builds as the story progresses, and as Shiftlet spends more time at the house. The way that she talks about her daughter is loving, but it is also hollow. Without acknowledging her daughter’s special needs or disabilities, she portrays Lucynell as an inhuman object that Shiftlet would be lucky to own. She is “ravenous” for a son-in-law because she has been taking care of an adult child for years by herself. She may truly love her daughter, but she is also willing to make a deal that, in another instance, she might be able to see the folly in. She believes Shiftlet to be beneath her, and at the same time she is willing do whatever she can do to get him to stay with her to care for her daughter. She offers Lucynell to him as a paragon of womanhood, even as she portrays her as little more than an affectionate pet. Even her tears as they drive away seem conflicted, as she lets her daughter leave with a man she’s known for one week.

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