Wise Blood

“Home is where the heart is” is the old famous quote that many people have said. But in some cases this is farthest from the truth. Tate’s statement suggests that “home” is a place, or even a state of mind. In the novel Wise Blood, the character Hazel Motes is far from home. A returning war veteran, Motes comes home to find his house in Tennessee abandoned and his family gone. Confused, Motes boards a train to Taulkinham and from there his journey begins, becoming farther and farther away from his “home”. Before the war, Motes’s home was full of religion and Christianity. The importance of home was apparent in Motes life, and was all he had left after returning from war. The feeling of being home could be related to the thought of God. At “home” Hazel has a sense of belonging and can be of importance. Importance of home affected Hazel. In the beginning of the novel, Motes meets various characters that mistake him for a minister. This is ironic, because after returning from the war, he is now against religion and antichurch. As Motes begins his twisted spiritual quest, he stoops further and further away from his “home” and his values. Hazel states “Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.” This means that his previous beliefs are slowly dwelling. As the novel continues, the reader…

light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” This quote, said by Patrick Rothfuss, explains why the words and language in Wise Blood are so important. In this novel by Flannery O’Connor, a man finds himself caught in a war of faith, destiny, and false prophets. It is set in the imaginary southern town of Taulkinham, Tennessee in the 1950s. The book accurately represents the way southerners lived at the time and how their environments affected their speech.…

Throughout the novel, Wise Blood written by Flannery O'Connor, the use of symbolism is used to explore many aspects of characters within the story. O'Connor uses many different writing techniques to depict her objective in writing. The use of symbolism is a technique she uses to justify her characterizations and the messages she wants readers to understand through this novel. This use of symbolism provides readers with an ability to develop a strong understanding of characters throughout Wise…

Introduction Wise Blood was written by Flannery O’Connor and published in 1951. This book tackles issues such as faith and redemption through the interpretation of its many characters. Main character Hazel Motes experiences these conflicts the most as he learns first hand what it means to be “clean” in the eyes of the Lord. As O’Connor herself states Wise Blood “is a comic novel about a Christian malgre lui … [in which there are] many wills conflicting in one man”(O’Connor 6-7). Basic…

Voice Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor is novel centered around the main character’s, Hazel Motes, struggle with religion and his quest to find himself. It is written from a narrative point of view and takes place in the fictional town in Tennessee called Taulkinham. The overall diction is very informal containing slang and dialect from the south; but the narrator’s voice characteristics like being very oppionated but yet unbiased provided a much need significance to the story. She provided…

hypocrisy. Hazel constantly points out the flaws of the people around him. He is a nihilist, and he condemns society for having a traditional, religious viewpoint. When he meets Asa Hawks, a conman posing as a blind preacher, Hazel warns the people against believing in the Jesus that Hawks is preaching about. He, in comparison, argues that the people are clean and that Jesus did not die for them. He backs up his argument with the statement “don’t I know what exists and what don’t… don’t I have…

Similarly to the character’s actions and thoughts, the character’s emotions also exemplify Wise Blood’s theme and the novel’s irony. Hazel Motes, when he enters Taulkinham, has already decided to begin his protest on God. He begins by sleeping with a prostitute named Lenora Watts. He sees her address etched inside a men’s bathroom stall, and immediately after hails a taxi to go to her house (O’Connor 26). Once at her house he sleeps with her for the first time. Ms. Watts refers to herself as…

him by saying, “O.E.’s got religion and is witnessing for Jesus” (O’Connor, “Parker” 671). The irony here is that the man they knew as “O. E.” indeed “got religion” and “is witnessing for Jesus.” The tattoo of Christ is his “testimony” to the new life into which he entered after his fiery encounter with grace. Rather than offering the reader a “warm and binding” grace, this story depicts a “dark disruptive” grace in which Christ blows the door to the sinner’s heart off its hinges, rather than…

Republic by Plato are clearly parallel to one another. There are three classes in the state and three parts of the mind in the ruler. The three classes of the state are the rulers, the soldiers, and the craftsmen. The three parts of the mind are the rational or reason part, the irrational appetitive part, and the spirited part. The rational corresponds to the rulers, the appetitive corresponds to the craftsmen, and the spirited corresponds to the soldiers. Socrates then…

Flannery O’Connor effectively connects the reader to the short novel Wise Blood with the use of vivid details. The clear details allow the reader to know the characters’ action, what they think, and what they focus on; therefore, the reader can make judgements about the characters, infer what are the characters’ intentions are, and even apply lessons found in the story to their own lives. The description creates a clear picture to the reader to understand how most people were during the 1950s.…