{"id":274,"date":"2017-02-26T12:08:49","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T17:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/?p=274"},"modified":"2017-02-26T12:08:49","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T17:08:49","slug":"the-lame-shall-enter-first-what-is-selfishness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/flannery-oconnor\/the-lame-shall-enter-first-what-is-selfishness\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Lame Shall Enter First&#8221; What is selfishness?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout\u00a0<em>The Lame Shall Enter First<\/em>, Sheppard continually references the joy he feels when &#8220;helping&#8221; others. For example, O&#8217;Connor notes regarding Sheppard&#8217;s work, &#8220;On Saturdays he worked at the reformatory as a counselor, receiving nothing for it but the satisfaction of knowing he was helping boys no one else cared about&#8221;(146). At first, this seems benign, After all, Sheppard is helping forgotten people in need. Further, after Sheppard sticks up for Johnson in the face of policeman, &#8220;[Sheppard&#8217;s] spirits were soaring. This is exactly what he needed&#8221;(179). Again, the pleasure Sheppard derives from helping Johnson is not inherently negative. However, as the story unfolds, Sheppard clearly does not have Johnson&#8217;s best interests in mind. In fact, he goes so far as to ultimately despise the child. Thus, O&#8217;Connor seems to be posing the question: How can one reconcile the joy they feel when helping others? At what point does this joy become counterproductive? Is helping others ever truly selfless?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout\u00a0The Lame Shall Enter First, Sheppard continually references the joy he feels when &#8220;helping&#8221; others. For example, O&#8217;Connor notes regarding Sheppard&#8217;s work, &#8220;On Saturdays he worked at the reformatory as a counselor, receiving nothing for it but the satisfaction of knowing he was helping boys no one else cared about&#8221;(146). At first, this seems benign, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":402,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flannery-oconnor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/402"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}