Wise Blood
by Flannery O'Connor 
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Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel founds The Church of God Without Christ but is show more still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Hazel's existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction. show lessTags
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by ateolf
Member Reviews
The title that I would suggest for this book is "The Denial". Not that Wise Blood is not appropriate, as it refers to the "wise blood" of Enoch Emery, one of the group of prominent characters in the book. It is rather because I believe that "The Denial" better represents the character of Hazel Motes who is the protagonist of the novel. The moment that Enoch Emery is overcome by his "wise blood" is surely powerful: "He had come to the city and--with a knowing in his blood--he had established himself at the heart of it."(p 76) On the other hand Hazel, by the end of the novel, is engulfed by his denial of his own body in his attempt to achieve a spiritual epiphany.
To reach that point of denial you have to go back to the beginning of the show more story where we meet Hazel Motes:
"Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car."(p 3)
Thus we meet a young man on the beginning of a journey. It is a journey fleeing from his past as much as it is one going forward toward a future filled with new people and changes in his own character.
Hazel, it turns out, is a man on a mission to preach of new and perverse sort of gospel to anyone who will listen whether they respond or not. This hearkens back to his grandfather who was a preacher "with Jesus hidden in his head like a stinger."(p 14) Hazel had lost his brothers and father to death, and had seen more death and indifference toward life while in the Army, but he was determined to follow in his grandfather's footsteps.
The story is a picaresque tale filled with unusual characters including a whore; a blind preacher named Asa with his daughter, Sabbath Lily; and Enoch Emery, a slow boy who is also on a mission moved by his inner blood that is wiser than any one else's as he proclaims to Hazel:
"'You act like you got wiser blood than anybody else,' he said, 'but you ain't! I'm the one has it. Not you, Me!'"(p 55) What they both share is a mission although they are on different paths with different missions and seemingly do not even speak the same language, or at least cannot understand each other.
As with all of Flannery O'Connor's fiction, there is an underlying message of the importance of faith and belief. The need for redemption from the sin of this world is demonstrated with a prose style that is fixated on the realities of life. However, in demonstrating this reality the author distorts it with the result often being grotesque characters and situations. She does not shy away from portraying the violence that people do to each other both physical and psychological. Ultimately, it is up to the reader to decide what the outcome of the story is -- whether any particular character is doomed to hell or redeemed by grace. All told, she presents a riveting story with unpredictable events and decisions that retain an aura of the believable while engendering puzzlement and a sort of quandary as to the meaning of it all. This reader found it both engaging and challenging in a good way, that is the questions that remain are valuable because they pertain to the most fundamental aspects of your life. show less
To reach that point of denial you have to go back to the beginning of the show more story where we meet Hazel Motes:
"Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car."(p 3)
Thus we meet a young man on the beginning of a journey. It is a journey fleeing from his past as much as it is one going forward toward a future filled with new people and changes in his own character.
Hazel, it turns out, is a man on a mission to preach of new and perverse sort of gospel to anyone who will listen whether they respond or not. This hearkens back to his grandfather who was a preacher "with Jesus hidden in his head like a stinger."(p 14) Hazel had lost his brothers and father to death, and had seen more death and indifference toward life while in the Army, but he was determined to follow in his grandfather's footsteps.
The story is a picaresque tale filled with unusual characters including a whore; a blind preacher named Asa with his daughter, Sabbath Lily; and Enoch Emery, a slow boy who is also on a mission moved by his inner blood that is wiser than any one else's as he proclaims to Hazel:
"'You act like you got wiser blood than anybody else,' he said, 'but you ain't! I'm the one has it. Not you, Me!'"(p 55) What they both share is a mission although they are on different paths with different missions and seemingly do not even speak the same language, or at least cannot understand each other.
As with all of Flannery O'Connor's fiction, there is an underlying message of the importance of faith and belief. The need for redemption from the sin of this world is demonstrated with a prose style that is fixated on the realities of life. However, in demonstrating this reality the author distorts it with the result often being grotesque characters and situations. She does not shy away from portraying the violence that people do to each other both physical and psychological. Ultimately, it is up to the reader to decide what the outcome of the story is -- whether any particular character is doomed to hell or redeemed by grace. All told, she presents a riveting story with unpredictable events and decisions that retain an aura of the believable while engendering puzzlement and a sort of quandary as to the meaning of it all. This reader found it both engaging and challenging in a good way, that is the questions that remain are valuable because they pertain to the most fundamental aspects of your life. show less
The Church Without Christ
SECOND READ December 18 2024 review
Still absolutely five stars.
I rarely re-read, but Wise Blood was one of those books--short as it is--that haunts you, taunts you.
The first time, the overriding impression I took away was of its pathos and violence. I felt a swath of pity, not just for Hazel, but for everyone we meet, all those unhinged, wandering, lost souls.
This second reading, I enjoyed the humor more, indeed found more humor to enjoy. It is a galloping messy tale! I gave up trying to put it under my contemporary psychological light, accepted humanity as baffling. (Humanity is baffling) when I was pointed by another fine GR reader and now friend, Dave Marsland to that excellent O'Connor essay, "Some Aspects show more of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction."
Aha! It was a brighter light. I then resolved to enter the world that O'Connor intended, as an observation of large mysteries of the human experience that sometimes require a literary short cut, so to speak. Thus, her so-called grotesques who not only leap from the pages but leap over overwrought reason and logic into the heart of perhaps the most baffling ancient mystery.
Here's what O'Connor herself says in my copy.
"AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1962)
Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say it. The book was written with zest, and if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgre lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death. Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen."
I think I read it this second time with more suggested zest
FIRST READ October 22 2024 review
This slim novel is driven by the religious logic of almost everyone we meet--the down and outs who have gotten their personalized ideas from what might be called their "blood," their defeated southern history, their evangelical upbringing, and their racism, resulting in an inheritance of overwhelming inner turmoil.
The protagonist, Hazel Motes, is not much over 20, and has been recently released and returned home to Tennessee after suffering an injury in WW II. That home, though, has been abandoned and cleaned out by thieves. We first meet him on a train now headed to the city, where he says, "I'm going to do some things I never have done before."
And he does, because he has released himself from his traditional faith. Only he isn't released. He is fighting his faith every second of his life, becoming a street corner preacher, preaching about his new church, the Church Without Christ, where there is no sin and everyone is clean with no need for redemption. It's the new truth as he sees it: that there is no truth. But Motes' revelation doesn't make him happy and free.
He is angry.
"His black hat sat on his head with a careful, placed expression and his face had a fragile look as if it might have been broken and stuck together again, or like a gun no one knows is loaded.”
What has broken this young man? What has made him a gun no one knows is loaded? We can only guess it is his experiences in WW II, things that opened his eyes, so to speak.
Along with Motes, we meet the people he meets, and learn how faith is distorted in their lives as well. They too contend with the shortcomings of their beliefs against their experiences, leaving them unfulfilled, lonely, or just morally and unlovingly hollow.
I can't help compare O'Connor's 1952 Wise Blood to Erskine Caldwell's 1953 Tobacco Road that I very recently read and heartily disliked. Caldwell created a novel of repugnant, ignorant, hapless characters, and made them ridiculous--butts of his dark humor. O'Connor also has created repugnant, ignorant, hapless characters but she treats them with deadly seriousness, even while including moments of dark humor, and dark horror too. For each of her characters there is a twisted, ever unresolved searching for peace, for grace, for comfort. O'Connor's writing is sublime genius. While neither are pleasant reads, one is a single-note gag, and the other is the complicated, tragic need for grace and redemption by various slices of suffering humanity.
O'Connor, as always, packs a mighty wallop.
I could have underlined the whole book. show less
SECOND READ December 18 2024 review
Still absolutely five stars.
I rarely re-read, but Wise Blood was one of those books--short as it is--that haunts you, taunts you.
The first time, the overriding impression I took away was of its pathos and violence. I felt a swath of pity, not just for Hazel, but for everyone we meet, all those unhinged, wandering, lost souls.
This second reading, I enjoyed the humor more, indeed found more humor to enjoy. It is a galloping messy tale! I gave up trying to put it under my contemporary psychological light, accepted humanity as baffling. (Humanity is baffling) when I was pointed by another fine GR reader and now friend, Dave Marsland to that excellent O'Connor essay, "Some Aspects show more of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction."
Aha! It was a brighter light. I then resolved to enter the world that O'Connor intended, as an observation of large mysteries of the human experience that sometimes require a literary short cut, so to speak. Thus, her so-called grotesques who not only leap from the pages but leap over overwrought reason and logic into the heart of perhaps the most baffling ancient mystery.
Here's what O'Connor herself says in my copy.
"AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1962)
Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say it. The book was written with zest, and if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgre lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death. Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen."
I think I read it this second time with more suggested zest
FIRST READ October 22 2024 review
This slim novel is driven by the religious logic of almost everyone we meet--the down and outs who have gotten their personalized ideas from what might be called their "blood," their defeated southern history, their evangelical upbringing, and their racism, resulting in an inheritance of overwhelming inner turmoil.
The protagonist, Hazel Motes, is not much over 20, and has been recently released and returned home to Tennessee after suffering an injury in WW II. That home, though, has been abandoned and cleaned out by thieves. We first meet him on a train now headed to the city, where he says, "I'm going to do some things I never have done before."
And he does, because he has released himself from his traditional faith. Only he isn't released. He is fighting his faith every second of his life, becoming a street corner preacher, preaching about his new church, the Church Without Christ, where there is no sin and everyone is clean with no need for redemption. It's the new truth as he sees it: that there is no truth. But Motes' revelation doesn't make him happy and free.
He is angry.
"His black hat sat on his head with a careful, placed expression and his face had a fragile look as if it might have been broken and stuck together again, or like a gun no one knows is loaded.”
What has broken this young man? What has made him a gun no one knows is loaded? We can only guess it is his experiences in WW II, things that opened his eyes, so to speak.
Along with Motes, we meet the people he meets, and learn how faith is distorted in their lives as well. They too contend with the shortcomings of their beliefs against their experiences, leaving them unfulfilled, lonely, or just morally and unlovingly hollow.
I can't help compare O'Connor's 1952 Wise Blood to Erskine Caldwell's 1953 Tobacco Road that I very recently read and heartily disliked. Caldwell created a novel of repugnant, ignorant, hapless characters, and made them ridiculous--butts of his dark humor. O'Connor also has created repugnant, ignorant, hapless characters but she treats them with deadly seriousness, even while including moments of dark humor, and dark horror too. For each of her characters there is a twisted, ever unresolved searching for peace, for grace, for comfort. O'Connor's writing is sublime genius. While neither are pleasant reads, one is a single-note gag, and the other is the complicated, tragic need for grace and redemption by various slices of suffering humanity.
O'Connor, as always, packs a mighty wallop.
I could have underlined the whole book. show less
I'm glad I picked up Wise Blood relatively soon after perusing A Good Man is Hard to Find, because this novel clarified some things in my mind about Flannery O'Connor's theology. I'm now certain that I disagree with just about every aspect of her worldview, to the point where I am actually repulsed by her assumptions and arguments. But I also find her thought processes fascinating, and her writing tight and, often, darkly funny. Moreover, it's probably a good exercise, every so often, to stretch one's brain around concepts completely foreign to one's way of thinking, and that Wise Blood most certainly requires me to do. Through Hazel Motes and his frantic attempts to escape his own religious conviction; through Enoch Emery and his show more resentful adherence to the mysterious dictates of his "wise blood"; through the sham blind-man Asa Hawks and his gleefully wicked daughter Sabbath; and through the blunt apathy and ignorant cruelty of all the regular citizens of the town of Taulkinham, O'Connor presents a vision of the world in such marked contrast to my own, that I can only make sense of it in glimpses, as if through a veil.
I should admit up front that I am not the ideal reader for this book. O'Connor writes in the Author's Note to Wise Blood:
I am one of the former class of reader: a secular humanist of the type that O'Connor ruthlessly lampoons throughout this novel, even if I'm not as stupid as most of her characters or as set on the triumph of consumerism and scientism over the mysteries inherent in human existence. Still, perhaps O'Connor would see me as stupid and cruel. That's the way she seemed to see everyone, after all, Christians and secularists alike: she seems to have interpreted the doctrine of original sin to mean that all humans are doltish and mean, all equally bad, not just imperfect but bound to do a poor job at whatever they set their minds to, which will undoubtedly be a petty, irrelevant thing to begin with. Irrelevant, that is, because human intention seems not to matter to O'Connor. Enoch Emery, for example, is resentful and mean about the mysterious messages he receives through his "wise blood," but despite his lack of understanding he must obey; he is subject to grace. Hazel Motes attempts to deny his faith in Jesus, but Christ haunts him wherever he goes and whatever atrocity he commits, a nightmare figure whose presence implies that Hazel needs salvation and is therefore unclean.
But Motes cannot escape sin; he cannot escape Jesus; he cannot escape into some kind of humanist daydream that declares him already clean and in need of no salvation. For O'Connor humanity is inherently sub-par—the hucksters out for a buck, the sleazy waitresses and their sleazier customers; the tight-fisted landlady plagued by the suspicion that she's being cheated. No character in Wise Blood is empathetic; the best you could say for any of them is that they're conventional, or, looked at another way, that they're tortured and struggling. And it matters not whether they try to be good, or try to be bad: God is an incomprehensible mystery, and his grace is given regardless of human intent or action. That the two most sympathetic characters in the novel commit murder before the end of it, seems hardly relevant to their, in O'Connor's word, integrity: as she herself wrote, "grace changes us and change is painful." Based on her writings I'd say she opined in the other direction too: not only did grace imply pain, but pain equaled grace.
When O'Connor's characters endure pain, they are closer to a state of grace. When Enoch Emery is most resentful; when Mrs. Flood is most troubled; when Hazel Motes wraps himself with barbed wire and fills his shoes with broken glass; they are, in O'Connor's mind, closer to God than when they are comfortable, and closer to God than the oblivious, semi-religious or secularist folks who stream by in blithe ignorance in her crowd scenes. Just as the murdered grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" "would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life"; just as the young boy in the story "The River" is closer to God when alone and drowning than at home with his drunk parents, tortured struggle is a sign, in Wise Blood, that grace has been received. Not because the recipient has become a more virtuous or better person, or because his tormentors are enlightened; on the contrary, the acts of torment are themselves more evidence of universal human corruption. It's just that, because of all humans' inherent badness, because they are intrinsically unable to fathom the mysteries of God and because their wills are inherently warped to desire the wrong things, human pain and discomfort is, for O'Connor, a fundamental symptom of the approach to the divine. The sham preacher who tells his congregants that "You don't have to believe nothing you don't understand and approve of" may be more comfortable and happy than Hazel Motes, and he may be no worse a person than Haze, but he is less in a state of grace. You can tell because he's not suffering, and because he is disregarding the fundamental mystery of existence.
(Can I just reiterate that I IN NO WAY relate to this. Nor do I imagine that this is official Catholic doctrine or the majority Christian view. O'Connor was seriously dark! I am just trying to fathom the way her philosophy worked.)
Much of the humor in Wise Blood comes from the disconnect between people who are suffering—people who are struggling, and doing daily battle with their religion—and those who are happy enough to drift along with conventional flow of life. O'Connor does not endow the sufferers and strugglers with any more intelligence than the complaisant secularists; most everyone in her novel is stupid as dirt. The strugglers, though, are gifted or cursed against their will with an instinct for living life at a symbolic, mythological level, which passes completely over everyone else's head. In this scene, for example, the protagonist Hazel Motes has just spotted a man he sees as his doppelgänger, another false prophet preaching from the hood of a car:
Hazel is either too noble, too apathetic, or too self-centered, here, to notice that "If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll hunt you down and kill you" is not an appropriate thing to say out loud in company, even if you believe you have spotted some kind of shadow-self whom God is telling to to search out and destroy. Not too surprising, since by this point it has been long established that Hazel is well-nigh driven mad by his religious angst. What's funnier, to me, is the response of the fat woman. She doesn't think to herself, "Wow, that is a batshit crazy thing to say! Maybe I should call the cops." She doesn't even become alarmed and inch away from Haze through the crush. No, she has decided she's going to have a superficial conversation with another member of the gawking crowd, and when Hazel gives her an answer she's not expecting, she just turns to someone else and responds to the absolute surface level of his comment: "I never seen no twins that hunted each other down." It's hilarious because the two people appear to be having a conversation with each other, but they're actually not interacting at all. He's too deep into symbolism and metaphor to be conscious of the surface, whereas she's too committed to the superficial to recognize a metaphor when it's standing in front of her.
And that's pretty much the fate, I think, of a secular person like me and a person of O'Connor's particular brand of extreme religiosity: we may attempt a conversation, but our words do not point to the same referents. I deeply admire what O'Connor does with the English language, and laugh at the bizarre interactions of her characters. I can even relate to the value of discomfort, in that it can stimulate human growth, and mystery, in that our existence contains more than we can fathom. But I, like her supposedly misguided secularist landlady, can't bring myself to admire what O'Connor admires, can't help asking myself why anyone would put themselves through such suffering if they believed in no hope of becoming a better person, especially considering all the pain and cruelty that already exist in the world. To do so is not useful—a shortcoming beyond which I am simply too utilitarian to move. For O'Connor, it is a mark of Hazel Motes's integrity that he is unable to escape his religious conviction; for me, who finds plenty of struggle and inspiration in secular life, it, and he, are merely incomprehensible.
I should admit up front that I am not the ideal reader for this book. O'Connor writes in the Author's Note to Wise Blood:
That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to.
I am one of the former class of reader: a secular humanist of the type that O'Connor ruthlessly lampoons throughout this novel, even if I'm not as stupid as most of her characters or as set on the triumph of consumerism and scientism over the mysteries inherent in human existence. Still, perhaps O'Connor would see me as stupid and cruel. That's the way she seemed to see everyone, after all, Christians and secularists alike: she seems to have interpreted the doctrine of original sin to mean that all humans are doltish and mean, all equally bad, not just imperfect but bound to do a poor job at whatever they set their minds to, which will undoubtedly be a petty, irrelevant thing to begin with. Irrelevant, that is, because human intention seems not to matter to O'Connor. Enoch Emery, for example, is resentful and mean about the mysterious messages he receives through his "wise blood," but despite his lack of understanding he must obey; he is subject to grace. Hazel Motes attempts to deny his faith in Jesus, but Christ haunts him wherever he goes and whatever atrocity he commits, a nightmare figure whose presence implies that Hazel needs salvation and is therefore unclean.
Did they know that even for that boy there, for that mean sinful unthinking boy standing there with his dirty hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, Jesus would die ten million deaths before He would let him lose his soul? He would chase him over the waters of sin! Did they doubt Jesus could walk on the waters of sin? That boy had been redeemed and Jesus wasn't going to leave him ever. Jesus would never let him forget he was redeemed. What did the sinner think there was to be gained? Jesus would have him in the end!
The boy didn't need to hear it. There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin. He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher. Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on the water and not know it and suddenly know it and drown.
But Motes cannot escape sin; he cannot escape Jesus; he cannot escape into some kind of humanist daydream that declares him already clean and in need of no salvation. For O'Connor humanity is inherently sub-par—the hucksters out for a buck, the sleazy waitresses and their sleazier customers; the tight-fisted landlady plagued by the suspicion that she's being cheated. No character in Wise Blood is empathetic; the best you could say for any of them is that they're conventional, or, looked at another way, that they're tortured and struggling. And it matters not whether they try to be good, or try to be bad: God is an incomprehensible mystery, and his grace is given regardless of human intent or action. That the two most sympathetic characters in the novel commit murder before the end of it, seems hardly relevant to their, in O'Connor's word, integrity: as she herself wrote, "grace changes us and change is painful." Based on her writings I'd say she opined in the other direction too: not only did grace imply pain, but pain equaled grace.
When O'Connor's characters endure pain, they are closer to a state of grace. When Enoch Emery is most resentful; when Mrs. Flood is most troubled; when Hazel Motes wraps himself with barbed wire and fills his shoes with broken glass; they are, in O'Connor's mind, closer to God than when they are comfortable, and closer to God than the oblivious, semi-religious or secularist folks who stream by in blithe ignorance in her crowd scenes. Just as the murdered grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" "would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life"; just as the young boy in the story "The River" is closer to God when alone and drowning than at home with his drunk parents, tortured struggle is a sign, in Wise Blood, that grace has been received. Not because the recipient has become a more virtuous or better person, or because his tormentors are enlightened; on the contrary, the acts of torment are themselves more evidence of universal human corruption. It's just that, because of all humans' inherent badness, because they are intrinsically unable to fathom the mysteries of God and because their wills are inherently warped to desire the wrong things, human pain and discomfort is, for O'Connor, a fundamental symptom of the approach to the divine. The sham preacher who tells his congregants that "You don't have to believe nothing you don't understand and approve of" may be more comfortable and happy than Hazel Motes, and he may be no worse a person than Haze, but he is less in a state of grace. You can tell because he's not suffering, and because he is disregarding the fundamental mystery of existence.
(Can I just reiterate that I IN NO WAY relate to this. Nor do I imagine that this is official Catholic doctrine or the majority Christian view. O'Connor was seriously dark! I am just trying to fathom the way her philosophy worked.)
Much of the humor in Wise Blood comes from the disconnect between people who are suffering—people who are struggling, and doing daily battle with their religion—and those who are happy enough to drift along with conventional flow of life. O'Connor does not endow the sufferers and strugglers with any more intelligence than the complaisant secularists; most everyone in her novel is stupid as dirt. The strugglers, though, are gifted or cursed against their will with an instinct for living life at a symbolic, mythological level, which passes completely over everyone else's head. In this scene, for example, the protagonist Hazel Motes has just spotted a man he sees as his doppelgänger, another false prophet preaching from the hood of a car:
Haze was standing next to a fat woman who after a minute turned her head and stared at him and then turned it again and stared at the True Prophet. Finally she touched his elbow with hers and grinned at him. "Him and you twins?" she asked.
"If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll hunt you down and kill you," Haze answered.
"Huh? Who?" she said.
He turned away and she stared at him and he got back in his car and drove off. Then she touched the elbow of a man on the other side of her. "He's nuts," she said. "I never seen no twins that hunted each other down."
Hazel is either too noble, too apathetic, or too self-centered, here, to notice that "If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll hunt you down and kill you" is not an appropriate thing to say out loud in company, even if you believe you have spotted some kind of shadow-self whom God is telling to to search out and destroy. Not too surprising, since by this point it has been long established that Hazel is well-nigh driven mad by his religious angst. What's funnier, to me, is the response of the fat woman. She doesn't think to herself, "Wow, that is a batshit crazy thing to say! Maybe I should call the cops." She doesn't even become alarmed and inch away from Haze through the crush. No, she has decided she's going to have a superficial conversation with another member of the gawking crowd, and when Hazel gives her an answer she's not expecting, she just turns to someone else and responds to the absolute surface level of his comment: "I never seen no twins that hunted each other down." It's hilarious because the two people appear to be having a conversation with each other, but they're actually not interacting at all. He's too deep into symbolism and metaphor to be conscious of the surface, whereas she's too committed to the superficial to recognize a metaphor when it's standing in front of her.
And that's pretty much the fate, I think, of a secular person like me and a person of O'Connor's particular brand of extreme religiosity: we may attempt a conversation, but our words do not point to the same referents. I deeply admire what O'Connor does with the English language, and laugh at the bizarre interactions of her characters. I can even relate to the value of discomfort, in that it can stimulate human growth, and mystery, in that our existence contains more than we can fathom. But I, like her supposedly misguided secularist landlady, can't bring myself to admire what O'Connor admires, can't help asking myself why anyone would put themselves through such suffering if they believed in no hope of becoming a better person, especially considering all the pain and cruelty that already exist in the world. To do so is not useful—a shortcoming beyond which I am simply too utilitarian to move. For O'Connor, it is a mark of Hazel Motes's integrity that he is unable to escape his religious conviction; for me, who finds plenty of struggle and inspiration in secular life, it, and he, are merely incomprehensible.
show less
She was not religious or morbid, for which every day she thanked her stars. [...] What possible reason could a sane person have for wanting to not enjoy himself any more?
She certainly couldn't say.
Wise Blood. It reads to me as if it was written in a trance -- as if some twisted angel had dictated it and the young Ms O'Connor just wrote it down, trusting it would amount to something. Most of its characters are all 'a little bit off their heads' and a big bit off the rails. Hazel Motes, played by Brad Dourif in the John Huston movie which I plan to watch again on DVD soon, is in obsessive revolt against the punitive and repressive Christianity of his childhood, and burns with an evangelical imperative to preach a Church without Christ (I would have said cacangelical but the word doesn't seem to exist). I remember reading a review of the movie that compared Hazel to the Monty Python character who was trying to train ravens to fly show more underwater. That comparison captures the bleak comedy of the book, but leaves out the appalling sense of waste and, in the end, awe that Hazel inspires. Flannery O'Connor was a Catholic living in the southern US. The characters in this book are all Protestant. Maybe they she's observing them from the other side of a sectarian fence and seeing them as wildly deluded, but the pervasive sense of intractable mystery, of not-knowing, and the lack of overt authorial commentary, makes a sectarian reading seem very wide of the mark. I finished the last page with a sense that I'd ben taken somewhere dark, weird and scarily believable. show less
I listened to all of Wise Blood yesterday - it was so weird that I just could not stop listening. It was narrated by Bronson Pinchot who was full of fabulous with all of the characters and somehow managed over the top without going, well, too over the top with it. My first foray into Flannery O'Connor, and it was like reading something that William Faulkner and Neil Gaiman collaborated on as a companion piece to A Confederacy of Dunces - Southern gothic with all of its tragic glory, laced with dark humor, irony, and a definite sense of place. It's brilliant, and just when you think it can't get any weirder, it does. Somehow, Flannery wrote a carnival. I already want to listen again with the book in front of me so that I can mark quotes, show more but part of me fears that the entire book would be marked. show less
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Southern gothic! Grotesques! Sinister stuff! Flannery O'Connor! D I S T U R B I N G….yet comic. In so many ways, [Wise Blood] is a hoot, even though its author has a serious intent.
As the novel begins, the main character, Hazel Motes, takes a train to Taulkinham in an unidentified state in the Old South.
Okay, okay!! Just stop a minute. Say that name again. Hazel…Motes. Yes, Hazel is a man, and yes, that's a little weird, but think about that name Motes. Motes. What comes to my mind is the Biblical injunction about a mote in the eye. The novel's author, Flannery O'Connor, is renown for her biblical themes. So I googled "a mote in the eye" and with little effort ended up at Matthew 7:3-5, which in the show more King James Bible reads:
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Hmmm, is this guy Motes a hypocrite? Does he have impaired vision? Note that by page 3, O'Connor is calling him "Haze," perhaps another indication he doesn't see clearly.
Now where were we? Oh, yeah, on the train with Haze. He's withdrawn and taciturn. Wearing a "glaring blue" suit, the price tag still stapled to a sleeve, and holding a black, wide-brimmed hat, it strikes many observers that he's a preacher. (He denies it.) When a fellow passenger tries to start a conversation, he says to her, "I reckon you think you been redeemed." When she doesn't respond, he repeats, "I reckon you think you been redeemed." A short time later, he's seated in the dining car with a different passenger, to whom he says, "If you've been redeemed, I wouldn't want to be." She laughs, and he asks, "Do you think I believe in Jesus? Well, I wouldn't even if He existed. Even if He was on this train."
Later, sleeping in his berth, he dreams about his grandfather, who was a preacher, a circuit preacher traveling around three Tennessee counties and using his car as a pulpit from which to harangue passers-by. From his grandfather, Haze inherited "a strong confidence in his power to resist evil." He had decided early in his life that he didn't need Jesus; it was "a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin."
Nevertheless, Motes has redemption, Jesus, and preaching weighing on his mind, one way or another. Clearly, it's a focus of this novel. So too is faulty conviction and faulty vision. During his dream, O'Connor tells us that "…the Bible was the only book he read. He didn't read it often but when he did he wore his mother's glasses. They tired his eyes so that after a short time he was always obliged to stop." And as the story progresses, we see how stubborn (and wrong) he is.
Once he gets to Taulkinham, he finds the name and address of a prostitute in the railroad station bathroom, rides to her place in a taxi whose driver insists Motes IS a preacher ("It's a look in your face somewheres"), and is welcomed into her bed ("That's okay, son. Momma don't mind if you ain't a preacher"). The next day Motes walks the streets of Taulkinham where he's ensnared by a teen named Enoch Emery and by a blind man rattling a tin cup while his young female companion distributes leaflets. The former sticks to Haze like a burr. He's new to the town himself, has no friends (though he does have a job as a guard at the city zoo), and thinks everyone in the town looks like "all they want to do is knock you down." The latter asks why Haze is following him, and as he and the girl amble away, he needles and goads him. "I can smell the sin on your breath." And: "I can hear the urge for Jesus in {your} voice." And: "Listen boy, you can't run away from Jesus. Jesus is a fact." And: "Some preacher has left his mark on you. Did you follow for me to take it off or give you another one?"
Asa Hawk is this preacher's name; the girl is, he asserts, his daughter, named Sabbath Lily Hawk. (I like the idea of a blind man being a Hawk; hawks have remark vision.) Haze is very curious about him, as well as about his peculiar "daughter." Before long, Haze has moved into their boarding house, and every day, he knocks at their door but is turned away. Sabbath Lily confides to Asa that she is drawn to Haze's eyes. "I like his eyes…They don't look like they see what he's looking at but they keep on looking."
About this time, Haze buys a derelict rat-colored Essex automobile, and he uses it as a pulpit—just like his grandfather—to preach about the Church without Christ. The first time Enoch sees him preaching from atop the Essex, he hears Haze shout: "The Church Without Christ don't have a jesus but it needs one! It needs a new jesus! It needs one that's all man, without blood to waste, and it needs one that don't look like any other man so you'll look at him. Give me such a jesus, you people." Enoch has a "Eureka moment." He knows where this figure is! He knows it is "the new jesus." He can feel it in his blood because Enoch knows he is blessed with "wise blood." It drives his life, telling him when to act and when to wait. And his blood is surging, driving him to act.
Haze preaches every evening, parking his car right outside a movie theater, so he can address young and old as they emerge from the show. One evening he has a disciple, a heavy-set fellow who expects to pump up the crowd and, in the bargain, collect some donations.The disciple identifies himself as Onnie Jay Holy, but soon acknowledges his name really is Hoover Shoats (need I point out that a shoat is a young pig). When Haze chases him away, he turns up the next night, standing on the sidewalk next to a duplicate of Haze's Essex complete with a Haze doppelganger standing on the hood.
Still ahead is GONGA! Giant Jungle Monarch, the shrunken man-doll from the zoo museum, a landlady in love, quick-lime, a barbed-wire chest-wrap, the acceptance of redemption, and the end of the novel. But if you are at all like me, it will live on in your head, challenging you to sort it all out. show less
Southern gothic! Grotesques! Sinister stuff! Flannery O'Connor! D I S T U R B I N G….yet comic. In so many ways, [Wise Blood] is a hoot, even though its author has a serious intent.
As the novel begins, the main character, Hazel Motes, takes a train to Taulkinham in an unidentified state in the Old South.
Okay, okay!! Just stop a minute. Say that name again. Hazel…Motes. Yes, Hazel is a man, and yes, that's a little weird, but think about that name Motes. Motes. What comes to my mind is the Biblical injunction about a mote in the eye. The novel's author, Flannery O'Connor, is renown for her biblical themes. So I googled "a mote in the eye" and with little effort ended up at Matthew 7:3-5, which in the show more King James Bible reads:
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Hmmm, is this guy Motes a hypocrite? Does he have impaired vision? Note that by page 3, O'Connor is calling him "Haze," perhaps another indication he doesn't see clearly.
Now where were we? Oh, yeah, on the train with Haze. He's withdrawn and taciturn. Wearing a "glaring blue" suit, the price tag still stapled to a sleeve, and holding a black, wide-brimmed hat, it strikes many observers that he's a preacher. (He denies it.) When a fellow passenger tries to start a conversation, he says to her, "I reckon you think you been redeemed." When she doesn't respond, he repeats, "I reckon you think you been redeemed." A short time later, he's seated in the dining car with a different passenger, to whom he says, "If you've been redeemed, I wouldn't want to be." She laughs, and he asks, "Do you think I believe in Jesus? Well, I wouldn't even if He existed. Even if He was on this train."
Later, sleeping in his berth, he dreams about his grandfather, who was a preacher, a circuit preacher traveling around three Tennessee counties and using his car as a pulpit from which to harangue passers-by. From his grandfather, Haze inherited "a strong confidence in his power to resist evil." He had decided early in his life that he didn't need Jesus; it was "a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin."
Nevertheless, Motes has redemption, Jesus, and preaching weighing on his mind, one way or another. Clearly, it's a focus of this novel. So too is faulty conviction and faulty vision. During his dream, O'Connor tells us that "…the Bible was the only book he read. He didn't read it often but when he did he wore his mother's glasses. They tired his eyes so that after a short time he was always obliged to stop." And as the story progresses, we see how stubborn (and wrong) he is.
Once he gets to Taulkinham, he finds the name and address of a prostitute in the railroad station bathroom, rides to her place in a taxi whose driver insists Motes IS a preacher ("It's a look in your face somewheres"), and is welcomed into her bed ("That's okay, son. Momma don't mind if you ain't a preacher"). The next day Motes walks the streets of Taulkinham where he's ensnared by a teen named Enoch Emery and by a blind man rattling a tin cup while his young female companion distributes leaflets. The former sticks to Haze like a burr. He's new to the town himself, has no friends (though he does have a job as a guard at the city zoo), and thinks everyone in the town looks like "all they want to do is knock you down." The latter asks why Haze is following him, and as he and the girl amble away, he needles and goads him. "I can smell the sin on your breath." And: "I can hear the urge for Jesus in {your} voice." And: "Listen boy, you can't run away from Jesus. Jesus is a fact." And: "Some preacher has left his mark on you. Did you follow for me to take it off or give you another one?"
Asa Hawk is this preacher's name; the girl is, he asserts, his daughter, named Sabbath Lily Hawk. (I like the idea of a blind man being a Hawk; hawks have remark vision.) Haze is very curious about him, as well as about his peculiar "daughter." Before long, Haze has moved into their boarding house, and every day, he knocks at their door but is turned away. Sabbath Lily confides to Asa that she is drawn to Haze's eyes. "I like his eyes…They don't look like they see what he's looking at but they keep on looking."
About this time, Haze buys a derelict rat-colored Essex automobile, and he uses it as a pulpit—just like his grandfather—to preach about the Church without Christ. The first time Enoch sees him preaching from atop the Essex, he hears Haze shout: "The Church Without Christ don't have a jesus but it needs one! It needs a new jesus! It needs one that's all man, without blood to waste, and it needs one that don't look like any other man so you'll look at him. Give me such a jesus, you people." Enoch has a "Eureka moment." He knows where this figure is! He knows it is "the new jesus." He can feel it in his blood because Enoch knows he is blessed with "wise blood." It drives his life, telling him when to act and when to wait. And his blood is surging, driving him to act.
Haze preaches every evening, parking his car right outside a movie theater, so he can address young and old as they emerge from the show. One evening he has a disciple, a heavy-set fellow who expects to pump up the crowd and, in the bargain, collect some donations.The disciple identifies himself as Onnie Jay Holy, but soon acknowledges his name really is Hoover Shoats (need I point out that a shoat is a young pig). When Haze chases him away, he turns up the next night, standing on the sidewalk next to a duplicate of Haze's Essex complete with a Haze doppelganger standing on the hood.
Still ahead is GONGA! Giant Jungle Monarch, the shrunken man-doll from the zoo museum, a landlady in love, quick-lime, a barbed-wire chest-wrap, the acceptance of redemption, and the end of the novel. But if you are at all like me, it will live on in your head, challenging you to sort it all out. show less
O’Connor wrote about the strange world she found herself living within in twentieth-century rural Georgia. Her characters were exceedingly strange, even grotesque. However, as her stories unfolded, the reader got inside these characters’ world-views. Indeed, they became relatable and empathy for their condition grows.
Wise Blood is no exception for this trend. This work is O’Connor’s first great work. She tells the story of the relationships between several characters who, to say the least, are very odd. One character pokes his own eyes out in order to blind himself. He is blinded to the presence of a widow who seeks security in serving him. Another character proclaims a “Church without Christ” – a group of people free of show more metaphysics. These characters all have in common a basic approach to reality: Instead of working with what’s in front of them, they all seek to impose their will upon their own existence. And that leads to their basic oddity.
Indeed, themes of alienation and estrangement are all over this book. No character seeks gratitude, virtue, or enjoyment. They are all simply seeking something that they don’t find at all. They all seem stuck in a deep rut that is governed by their personalities. Being country folk, they seem completely oblivious to social norms. Indeed, one character spends time staring through binoculars at city folk at a swimming pool. He finds the conventions of women foreign and lustfully ogles them through the bushes. Al this seems strange, odd, and alienated from how life ought to be lived.
The specter of American fundamentalism stands behind all of these stories. No one is educated in the ways of the day. Instead, they all react to what’s going on around them. Even the “Church without Christ” is essentially a counter-position to the religion that this character finds all around him. O’Connor’s characters all seem “Christ-haunted” as she describes what transpires around herself. O’Connor was a devout Roman Catholic. She saw what she could only portray as the excesses of Protestantism surrounding her.
To her, Protestantism seemed like a form of indoctrination through religious teaching. It did not perceive reality but seemed to impose itself and its order upon reality. Hence the Christ-haunting. This religious practice instead of saving people, made people grotesque and alienated.
One could only wonder what O’Connor would say about the American South in the age of Trump. Seemingly, people would seem only more estranged from their essential purpose in life. Instead of building character and virtue, people merely seek power, security, and lesser things. As such, O’Connor’s social critique in Wise Blood only seems still relevant to contemporary American culture. She offers no answers except the timeless answer of being “clear sighted” to what is going on around you. show less
Wise Blood is no exception for this trend. This work is O’Connor’s first great work. She tells the story of the relationships between several characters who, to say the least, are very odd. One character pokes his own eyes out in order to blind himself. He is blinded to the presence of a widow who seeks security in serving him. Another character proclaims a “Church without Christ” – a group of people free of show more metaphysics. These characters all have in common a basic approach to reality: Instead of working with what’s in front of them, they all seek to impose their will upon their own existence. And that leads to their basic oddity.
Indeed, themes of alienation and estrangement are all over this book. No character seeks gratitude, virtue, or enjoyment. They are all simply seeking something that they don’t find at all. They all seem stuck in a deep rut that is governed by their personalities. Being country folk, they seem completely oblivious to social norms. Indeed, one character spends time staring through binoculars at city folk at a swimming pool. He finds the conventions of women foreign and lustfully ogles them through the bushes. Al this seems strange, odd, and alienated from how life ought to be lived.
The specter of American fundamentalism stands behind all of these stories. No one is educated in the ways of the day. Instead, they all react to what’s going on around them. Even the “Church without Christ” is essentially a counter-position to the religion that this character finds all around him. O’Connor’s characters all seem “Christ-haunted” as she describes what transpires around herself. O’Connor was a devout Roman Catholic. She saw what she could only portray as the excesses of Protestantism surrounding her.
To her, Protestantism seemed like a form of indoctrination through religious teaching. It did not perceive reality but seemed to impose itself and its order upon reality. Hence the Christ-haunting. This religious practice instead of saving people, made people grotesque and alienated.
One could only wonder what O’Connor would say about the American South in the age of Trump. Seemingly, people would seem only more estranged from their essential purpose in life. Instead of building character and virtue, people merely seek power, security, and lesser things. As such, O’Connor’s social critique in Wise Blood only seems still relevant to contemporary American culture. She offers no answers except the timeless answer of being “clear sighted” to what is going on around you. show less
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Author Information
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Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia. She had a quiet, bookish life as a child before attending Georgia State College for Women and going on tot he Writers Workshop at the State University of Iowa, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree. Her 1949 dissertation consisted of six short stories, one of which she developed into her show more first novel, Wise Blood (1952). Wise Blood is the story of a fanatical, wandering preacher who sets out to found a "church of truth without Jesus Christ crucified." The book introduces some of the religious themes that run throughout O'Connor's later work. Her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away (1960), is the story of murder involving a Tennessee backwoods preacher and a small boy. Once again, O'Connor explores unusual manifestation of religion and human eccentricities. Although O'Connor produced only a small body of work during her relatively brief lifetime, she has received much critical attention. O'Connor suffered from lupus, an inherited disease, which crippled her and cut short her life, and so her creative work was largely compressed within a decade of the 1950's. Her father also dies of Lupus when she was 15 years old. O'Connor is frequently praised as being the most creative and distinctive writer of this period. The two most notable aspects of her fiction are its religious themes and its commentary on the oppressive traditions of the mid-twentieth-century Deep South. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Flannery O'Connor has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Has the adaptation
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Wise Blood
- Original title
- Wise blood
- Original publication date
- 1952
- People/Characters
- Hazel Motes; Enoch Emery; Asa Hawks; Sabbath Lily Hawks; Hoover Shoats
- Important places
- Tennessee, USA; Southern States, USA
- Related movies
- Wise Blood (1979 | IMDb)
- Dedication
- For Regina
- First words
- Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car.
- Blurbers
- Gordon, Caroline; Leithauser, Brad
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 4,364
- Popularity
- 3,399
- Reviews
- 124
- Rating
- (3.84)
- Languages
- 11 — Arabic, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Croatian, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 38
- ASINs
- 36