Moral Corruption In Wise Blood And A Good Man Is Hard

Moral corruption is not being concerned with the distinction between good or bad, or right or wrong and only focusing on one’s own mean to the end. Moral corruption leads to the failure of distinguishing between what is right or wrong for them and only care about what the person feels is right. In Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor displays moral corruption through several characters including Asa Hawks and Hazel Motes from Wise Blood and the Grandmother and the Misfit from “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” In Wise Blood, Hazel Motes is a person whose behavior or attitude sets him apart from others and then there is Asa Hawks who is an evangelist and thinks it is right to falsely preach and is a fraud.

On the other hand In Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” some characters display moral corruption but present it in a different way. Asa Hawks and the Grandmother are true testaments of what a morally corrupt person is meant to be. Asa Hawks is morally corrupt because he pretends to be a blind preacher who is a fraud. Asa Hawks falsely preaches on the street and disguises himself as an evangelist who tricks the public in his “false preaching,” making them believe that he is a true follower of Jesus. Asa Hawk’s moral corruption is revealed when he states, “He [preaches] for an hour on the blindness of Paul, working himself up until he [sees] himself stuck by a Divine flash of lightning and, with courage enough

Hazel reveals the qualities of a person who have a misdirected knowledge of spiritual purpose. Hazel attempts to turn his back on his religious background by criticizing Christ to the public, engaging in illegitimate sex, and establishing his “Church of Christ Without Christ.” While he is preaching he says that, “[He is] going to preach a new church- the church of truth without Jesus Christ Crucified’” (Wise Blood 51). Hazel has no knowledge of Jesus Christ yet he wants to run a “Church of Christ Without Christ.” Hazel preaches based off of his ideas and wants people to believe in him. Hazel explains to people that Jesus was crucified but not for us. He rejects the truth, which is Jesus Christ and this allows him to grip on to violence and sex because there is no more meaning left. However, the Misfit sticks to a moral code that remains coherent and strong. From his experiences as a criminal, he believes that the mistreatment is always inconsistent to the crime that does not really matter at the end. He has confusion about religion. Whereas the grandmother accepts faith wholeheartedly and without any doubt, the Misfit experiments religious beliefs and decides on how he should follow them or not. He has chosen to live by the notion that religion is meaningless and remains to his own kind of religion when he says, ‘”Jesus [is] the only One that ever [raises] the dead… If He