LRB- August 24, 2014

"The Lame Shall Enter First"
By: Flannery O'Connor



In this story, many characters are introduced that fit into multiple different character classifications. One character that is most dynamically changed in this story is Sheppard, the father of Norton, and the father figure, if you will, to Rufus. Sheppard is a very giving man, and he worked at the reformatory school on Saturdays, giving up his day for nothing more than the satisfaction of  knowing that he was helping the boys that no one else cared about. He is very selfless toward others, but it is very noticeable very quickly that he doesn't really try to do anything to better his own son. He is too busy helping other people. While seeing the potential in one of the reformatory boys, he fails to even acknowledge the untapped potential of his son, this can be seen throughout the story in various places. The telescope stands as a symbol of being a vessel or instrument to focus in on the future. When he has Rufus looking to the stars (another symbol for dreams and aspirations), he neglects to notice that his son is enthralled with what he can become, even though Sheppard never tells Norton he can do anything he puts his mind to like he does Rufus.

Sheppard is so consumed with bettering his troublemaker of a protégée that he is blinded to think that Rufus can help his son overcome his selfishness, when in actuality, Sheppard is the one being truly selfish. Ever so slowly, Sheppard deteriorates into a shell of his former self, abandoning his previous attitude and the generosity and selflessness of his character for a deluded and almost insane persona. He begins to justify his wrongdoing of his son toward the end and repeats saying, "I have nothing to reproach myself with," and, "I did more for him than I did for my own child." which points to a point of reproach that he fails to accept, his selfishness.

Sheppard goes from being a secretly selfish but selfless man (when it wasn't toward his son), to being the ugly, demented person he probably always was on this inside, just manifest on the outside where everyone could see it. His shift in persona leads him to finally come to the revelation of who his son really was the entire time, the person peering into the telescope, the one that had the true raw potential, but it was possibly too late to fix the damage he caused to their relationship, or at least what was left of it.