Flannery O’Connor stated that she didn’t understand when her works were termed Southern Gothic or grotesque. She continued throughout her life to emphasize that the theme of her works is redemption. Nevertheless, Wise Blood is grotesque.
Hazel Motes has returned from the service after World War II to find his home town in Tennessee deserted and his house crumbling and decrepit, so he goes to live in the city, the fictional town of Taulkinham, Alabama. Having grown up in a fundamentalist environment, he has decided that Jesus was just a man and there is nothing from which to be redeemed. Soon, he is preaching outside movie theaters about the Church of Christ Without Christ.
Haze doesn’t see anything he’s looking at and doesn’t hear anything anyone says to him. He is totally wrapped up in his obsessions about religion. He becomes fascinated by Asa Hawks, an evangelist who supposedly blinded himself for Christ, and can’t see that this man is a con man who is not even blind.
He also meets Enoch Emery, a whining zookeeper who spends his days peeping out of the bushes at the women bathing in the park swimming pool. Enoch tells Haze that his family has “wise blood,” that is, his blood tells him where to go in life and what to do. Enoch’s blood is obsessed with a mummy in the museum, which he thinks would be a Jesus for Haze’s church, not seeming to fully understand the point of Haze’s church. But Enoch doesn’t see or listen either.
In fact, no one in this novel listens to what anyone else says, and all of the characters are incredibly ignorant and uncultured. They are all grotesque, repellent creatures. Although the novel is supposed to be comic, it only made me laugh despite myself, as the situation becomes more and more ridiculous. O’Connor’s humor is brutal.
Everything in this short novel seems significant, is to be paid attention to, even the characters’ names. Both of Hazel Motes’ first and last names refer to the eyes, and Haze can’t see. Enoch Emery is abrasive. Asa Hawks is the “blinded” con artist who can actually see, and his daughter Sabbath Lily is anything but a lily. Hoover Shoats and Onnie Jay Holy try to take over Haze’s church. And speaking of Shoats, keep an eye out for the pig imagery, and think about what pigs are a symbol for in the Bible.
This novel is deemed a work of “low comedy and high seriousness.” Just speaking for myself, the religious theme is not one I find interesting. Yet, when you read O’Connor, you can’t help but be drawn along to the end.
What? Me Read? 