Wise Blood

Wise Blood

First edition
Author Flannery O'Connor
Country United States
Language English
Genre Southern Gothic novel
Publisher Harcourt, Brace & Company
Publication date
 May 15, 1952
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 238
OCLC 256887668

Wise Blood is the first novel by American author Flannery O'Connor, published in 1952. The novel was assembled from several disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review. The first chapter is an expanded version of her Master's thesis, "The Train," and other chapters are reworked versions of "The Peeler," "The Heart of the Park," and "Enoch and the Gorilla." The novel concerns a returning World War II veteran who, haunted by a lifelong crisis of faith, resolves to form an anti-religious ministry in an eccentric Southern town.

The novel received little critical attention when it first appeared, but has since come to be appreciated as a somewhat unique work of "low comedy and high seriousness" with enduring if disturbing religious themes.[1][2] It was placed 62nd in The Guardian's list of 100 greatest novels of all time.[3]

Plot summary

Recently discharged from service in World War II and surviving on a government pension for unspecified war wounds, Hazel Motes returns to his family home in Tennessee to find it abandoned. Leaving behind a note claiming a chifforobe as his private property, Motes boards a train for Taulkinham. The grandson of a traveling preacher, Motes grew up struggling with doubts regarding salvation and original sin; following his experiences at war, Motes has become an avowed atheist, and intends to spread a gospel of antireligion. Despite his aversion to all trappings of Christianity, he constantly contemplates theological issues and finds himself compelled to purchase a suit and hat that cause others to mistake him for a minister.

In Taulkinham, Motes initially takes up residence with Leora Watts, a prostitute, and befriends Enoch Emery, a profane, manic, eighteen-year-old zookeeper forced to come to the city after his abusive father kicked him out of their house. Emery introduces Hazel to the concept of "wise blood," an idea that he has innate, worldly knowledge of what direction to take in life, and requires no spiritual or emotional guidance. Together, Emery and Motes witness a blind preacher and his teenage daughter crash a street vendor's potato peeler demonstration to advertise for their ministry. The preacher introduces himself as Asa Hawks and his daughter as Sabbath Lily; Motes finds himself drawn to the pair, which Hawks attributes to a repressed desire for religious salvation. Angry, Motes begins shouting blasphemies to the crowd and declares that he will found his own, anti-God street preaching ministry. Motes' declarations are lost on everyone except for Emery, who becomes infatuated with the idea.

After a bored Leora destroys his hat for her own amusement, Motes moves into the boarding house where Asa and Lily live. Motes becomes fixated on the eerie Lily and begins spending time with her. Asa has Lily give Motes a newspaper clipping reporting Asa's announcement that he will blind himself with quicklime at a revival in order to detach himself from worldly pursuits. Initially intending to seduce Lily in order to corrupt her spiritual purity, Motes discovers that she is in fact intending to seduce him. Now skeptical of her and Asa's entire ministry, Motes slips into Hawks' room one night and finds him without his sunglasses on, with perfectly intact eyes: Hawks had faltered when he had attempted to blind himself because his faith was not strong enough, and ultimately left the ministry to become a con artist. His secret found out, Asa flees town, leaving Lily to fend for herself. She moves in with Motes, and he begins to more aggressively pursue his ministry, purchasing a dilapidated car to use as a mobile pulpit.

Meanwhile, Enoch Emery, believing that Motes' church needs a worldly "prophet," breaks into the museum attached to the zoo where he works and steals a mummified dwarf, which he begins keeping under his sink. He ultimately presents it to Lily to give to Motes on his behalf; when Lily appears to Motes cradling it in her arms in a parody of the Madonna and Child, Motes experiences a violent revulsion to the image and destroys the mummy, throwing its remnants out the window.

Inspired by Motes' fledgling street ministry, local con artist Hoover Shoats renames himself Onnie Jay Holy and forms his own ministry, the "Holy Church of Christ Without Christ," which he encourages the disenfranchised to join for a donation of $1. The absurdity amuses passersby and they begin to join as a joke, angering Motes, who wants to legitimately and freely spread his message of antireligion. Despite Motes' protests, Holy moves to the next level in promoting his ministry, hiring a homeless, alcoholic man to dress up like Hazel and act as his "Prophet."

Enoch, during a rainstorm, seeks refuge under a theater marquee, and learns that as a promotion, a gorilla will be brought to the theater to promote a new jungle movie. An excited Enoch stands in line to shake the gorilla's hand, but is startled to find that the gorilla is actually a man in a costume who, unprovoked, tells Enoch to "go to hell." The incident causes Enoch's "wise blood" to give him some inarticulated revelation, and he seeks out a program of the man in the costume's future appearances. That night, Enoch stalks the man to another theater, stabs him with a sharpened umbrella handle, and steals his costume. Enoch takes the costume out to the woods, where he strips naked and buries his clothes in a shallow "grave" before dressing up as the gorilla. Satisfied with his new appearance, Enoch comes out of the woods and attempts to greet a couple on a date by shaking their hand. Enoch is disappointed when they flee in terror, and finds himself alone on a rock overlooking the night sky of Taukinham.

Back in town, Motes angrily watches as Holy begins to grow rich off of his new ministry. One night he follows Holy's "prophet" as he drives home (in a car resembling Hazel's), which he runs off the road; when the man exits the car, the stronger, more forceful Motes threatens him and orders him to strip. The man begins to comply, but Motes is overcome by a sudden rage and repeatedly runs the man over. Exiting the car to ensure he is dead, Motes is startled when the dying man begins confessing his sins to Motes.

The next day, Motes is pulled over while leaving Taulkinham by a strange policeman with unnaturally blue eyes, who claims to be citing him for driving without a license. He orders Motes to drive to a nearby cliff, orders him out of the car, then, remarking that someone without a license doesn't need a car, pushes it off the cliff, destroying it. The incident, coupled with the false prophet's death, causes Motes to become sullen and withdrawn. On his walk back to Taulkinham, Motes purchases a tin bucket and sack of quicklime and returns to the boarding house. Completing the action that Hawks couldn't finish, he blinds himself with the quicklime. During an extended period of living as an ascetic at the boarding house, he begins walking around with barbed wire wrapped around his torso and sharp rocks and pebbles in his shoes, and after paying for his room and board, he throws away any remaining money from his military pension. Believing that Motes has gone insane, the landlady, Mrs. Flood, hatches a plot to marry him, collect on his government pension, and have him committed to an insane asylum. In attempting to seduce Motes, Mrs. Flood instead falls in love with him. After she suggests to Motes that they marry and she care for him, Motes wanders off into a thunderstorm. He is found three days later, lying in a ditch and suffering from exposure to the elements. Angry at being asked to return what they believe is a mentally-ill indigent, one of the police officers who finds him strikes him in the head with his baton while loading Motes into a police car, exacerbating Motes' rapidly deteriorating condition. Motes dies in the police car on his way back to the boarding house.

When the dead Motes is presented to Mrs. Flood, she mistakenly thinks he is still alive. She has him placed in bed and cares for his lifeless corpse, telling him he can live with her for as long as he likes, free of charge. Looking into his empty eye sockets, Mrs. Flood thinks she sees a light twinkling inside them.

Literary context

Wise Blood began with four separate stories published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review in 1948 and 1949. Flannery O'Connor then published it as a complete novel in 1952, and Signet advertised it as "A Searching Novel of Sin and Redemption."

Themes

In the introduction to the 10th anniversary publication of Wise Blood, O'Connor states that the book is about freedom, free will, life and death, and the inevitability of belief. [4] Themes of redemption, racism, sexism, and isolation also run through the novel.

Adaptations

A film was made of Wise Blood in 1979, directed by John Huston, and starring Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes and John Huston himself as the evangelist grandfather. Shot mostly in Macon, Georgia, it is a fairly literal filming of the novel.

An immersive opera and gallery installation adapted from the novel is to be hosted by The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, Minnesota USA) in May and June of 2015. From their website: "Visual artist Chris Larson and composer Anthony Gatto join forces to bring the darkly humorous world of Flannery O'Connor's WISE BLOOD to life. Set in the post-industrial beauty of a 130-year-old factory space turned art gallery, this immersive opera takes the audience on a journey alongside the eccentric and always captivating characters of this story. The audience is brought directly into, around and through large scale installation pieces, kinetic sculptures and projections. WISE BLOOD features an incredibly diverse cast of performers including Hüsker Dü founding member Grant Hart, celebrated opera tenor Martin Bakari, Zoo Animal's Holly Hansen and more. The musicians of the Adam Meckler orchestra, Youngblood Brass Band, provide the musical core to this Southern Gothic Tale."[5]

References

  1. ↑ eNotes: Wise Blood Study Guide: Introduction Online. Accessed: August 21, 2011.
  2. ↑ Park, Mary. Wise Blood Editorial Review Amazon.com. Online. Accessed: August 21, 2011.
  3. ↑ McCrum, Robert (2003-10-12). "The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list". The Guardian. Retrieved 2014-03-24.
  4. ↑ O'Connor, Flannery. "Preface to second edition, 1962". goodreads. Retrieved 2015-03-03.
  5. ↑ http://www.soapfactory.org/exhibit.php?content_id=684

External links