ipl-logo

Theme Of Wise Blood By Flannery O Connor

747 Words3 Pages

Wise Blood, a novel written by Flannery O’Connor, was a classic of twentieth century American literature. Published in 1952, the novel followed Hazel Motes, a man who attempted to leave behind his belief in Christ only to inevitably return to his faith. Wise Blood possessed a theme of the redemption of man by Jesus Christ, one that was common in most of O’Connor’s work. Critiques have called attention to O’Connor’s use of material prosperity and characters’ symbolism that delivered her theme of the salvation of man; however, her novel’s underlying purpose has been misinterpreted by some critics. Written by Daniel Littlefield, Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood: 'Unparalleled Prosperity' Spiritual Chaos it was pointed out that material prosperity’s …show more content…

Specifically, Enoch Emery’s first name that could be directly compared to Enoch, son of Cain. Caron points out the connection between Enoch’s comment about his father’s scar and the Old Testament story of Cain’s son being born after Cain was cursed for murdering his brother Able (Caron). Although Enoch had knowledge of Christ, he was somewhat “cursed” by his inability to put his knowledge into use and possibility his past. Caron then less directly compared the character Haze to the New Testament of the bible and its emphasis on blindness. The New Testament used sight to relate to the ability of distinguishing Jesus’ teachings and knowing how to utilize them in one’s life (Caron). In Wise Blood, Hazel is blind to faith because of the "haze" of his pride and the idea that he does not need to be redeemed. Haze's metaphorical and literal blindness were a symbol of possessing sight, but not being able to see the gospel and vice versa (O’Connor). Although Haze’s name cannot be directly located in the bible, both characters served as primary symbols of Christianity’s concept of utilizing the gospel throughout one’s life on the path to

Show More
Related
208 Words | 1 Pages

Hazel Motes was raised religiously and taught to fear God and suffer for redemption. As he growing up, Hazel wished to be a preacher, to emulate his grandfather, but he loses his religious beliefs during the war. Ironically, he does become a preacher, but a preaching how Jesus is a lie, not a savior. Enoch Emery is a creature of habit and follows his “wise blood,” without self-control. His actions are controlled by his instincts in a very animalistic manner.

Read More
152 Words | 1 Pages

Perspectives Based on the perceptives on Flannery O’Connor personality she is described to be a loner. O’Connor has a different way of think from other authors because of her “sly humor, her disdain for mediocrity, and her often merciless attacks on affection and triviality.” (Gordon) She wrote her works to fit a new style a dark humor with Southern Gothic theme. O’Connor shows how grotesque the world is and how it needs a light to help change the world. Her works of irony is her main contribution to the world.

Read More
1740 Words | 7 Pages

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood contains several characters who reject Jesus and the idea of original sin and God’s redemption. Wise Blood shows that without God people either become shrunken humans or animals. Enoch Emery becomes an animal figure by the end of the novel. While O’Connor connects Enoch’s lack of faith to his animalistic tendencies, one can also ascertain that Enoch completely immerses himself in his wise blood because his life lacks a love for God and other people, promoting the theme that without divine or human love one can only act like an animal. O’Connor’s introduction to Enoch establishes his lonely, unloved existence.

Read More
1086 Words | 5 Pages

“Revelation”: Annotated Bibliography Growing up in the south people tend to lean on religion as a source for guidance. You are bound to get asked by someone “what church do you attend’? The south can pride itself on the Bible belt state with a more conservative side twist. Using the biographical strategy to analyze how Flannery O’Connor’s religious upbringings in the south influenced her writings with “Revelation” by influencing the character Mrs. Turpin to be a predigest religious extremist.

Read More
790 Words | 4 Pages

Wise Blood and The Catholicism By Reem Abbas 43380421 Flannery O’Connor is one of the greatest Southern writers during the twentieth century. She is considered as a faithful and a good Christian writer. In her fiction, she never neglects her Catholic concerns. The large respect for O'Connor’s religion appears in most of her literary works.

Read More
917 Words | 4 Pages

As a novelist, Flannery O’Conner dedicated her life to revealing mysteries of the world by intertwining many examples of sacramentality, mediation, and communion in her stories and essays. Presently focusing on two of her essays, “Catholic Novelists and Their Readers” and “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South”, O’Conner dives deep in to the realm of spiritual understanding and enlightenment. “Catholic Novelists and Their Readers” portrays a clear example of sacramentality through her belief of the incarnation of Jesus into human flesh. O’Conner believes that the vocation of the Catholic fiction writer is that mystery ought to be incarnated into human life through the words she places on paper. “Whatever the novelist sees in the way

Read More
859 Words | 4 Pages

An Examination of Theme in the Short Story “Revelation” Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation” explores the issue of racism and class dynamics in the southern United States during the 1960’s, the time period that O’Connor wrote this story. The main character, Mrs. Ruby Turpin, is a privileged white land-owning wife. While she is somewhat sympathetic of people of lower class, she is also quick to categorize and judge people by their rank in society. However, a young girl’s unpredictable outburst and Mrs. Turpin’s own obsessive self-consciousness eventually lead her to the revelation that regardless of class, all people are equal in the eyes of God.

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

Flannery O’Connor, in her short life, wrote one novel and many short stories that impact literature to this day. She wrote two superb short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People, which have many similarities hidden in the theme of their complex text. While both stories include themes about religion, identity, and the way we view others, the endings are astoundingly different. Nonetheless, O’Connor’s main theme concerning the way we view other people, is the most significant in both short stories. In Good Country People, Mrs. Hopewell repeatedly states that the bible salesman is the “salt of the earth” meaning that he is just a good and simple country boy.

Read More
1068 Words | 5 Pages

Literary Analysis ENG2106 Student name: Li Michaela Bernice Student ID: 4002551 Word count: Grace and sins Flannery O’Connor was a Southern author from America who frequently wrote in a Southern Gothic style and depended vigorously on local settings and bizarre characters. Her works likewise mirrored her Roman Catholic faith and regularly examined questions of morality and ethics. She created violence in the end of both “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge” to put the stories to the end. She asserted that she has found that violence is strangely capable of returning her characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace, and also violence is the extreme situation that best reveals who

Read More
1155 Words | 5 Pages

Two stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Revelation” by Flannery O' Conner both share a similar theme. The theme most common throughout both stories is religion. The author uses racism and religion in most of her stories and characters all seem to have similar personality traits. A few comparisons between “Revelation” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is that both these stories start off quick and to the point. These two stories contain a strong sense of superiority of their characters.

Read More
1870 Words | 8 Pages

In her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor is brutally honest in confronting her audience, which presumably differs from her staunch Catholic point of view. Using elements of distortion and exaggeration, O’Connor points out the atrocities of the world she and her audience live in—America in the 1950s and 60s. Racial tensions and political decisions proved divisive, corrupting and splitting America. O’Connor believes that her audience was part of the self-righteous, judgmental, and morally corrupt divisions of America—divisions embodied by the main character: the grandmother. O’Connor writes with great conviction to convey the idea that even the most unlikely of people, including those with great obstacles to salvation,

Read More
1142 Words | 5 Pages

Flannery O’Connor is a renowned Southern author, noted for her gothic works and heavily Catholic themes. She focuses predominantly on racial tensions, morality, and divine grace. The religious and moral themes of her short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, converge on the character of the grandmother. Despite the self-proclamations of fulfilling what it means to be a Southern lady, Grandmother holds a superficial grasp of her religion. Throughout the story, the Grandmother never truly changed, only her ostensible actions did.

Read More
904 Words | 4 Pages

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, she address the themes of morality, innocence, and religion. The characters in this piece of literature are portrayed as good, bad, or an undecided mixture of both. O’Connor explores the way that people are perceived and how that compares to how they perceive themselves. In the short story, this idea of perception is enforced by the weak religious ideas of the Grandmother and society’s judgements of The Misfit. Through the contrast of their different roles during their interaction, she is able to delve into the concepts of human introspection and devoutness.

Read More
1466 Words | 6 Pages

“Her characters, who sometimes accept and other times reject salvation, often have a warped self-image, especially of their moral status and of the morality of their actions” (Hobby). This addresses how some of the important lines in the story describe to the reader about the extreme exaggeration and the psychological realism of the church, which O’Connor wanted to express within her story. The extreme use of exaggeration and how the use of the characters bring a sense of an uncanny feeling of good and evil within each character, portrays how deep the meaning is seen in this short story.  “the story is filled with dark, grotesque humor created largely by the story 's many ironies” (Hobby). The author of this source highly emphasizes that O’Connor creates this dark humor for her characters to build on her meaning in the story and uses irony to create the distortion within her

Read More
1077 Words | 5 Pages

A question one might ask after hearing any story is, “What is the point?” In other words, what is the morale or theme of the story? Flannery O’Connor’s short story, which is called “Revelation,” has an intriguing and complex theme. The theme is that anyone who considers himself or herself a righteous person, but does not treat all people with equal value, must change his or her actions, or he or she is not truly righteous at all. This theme is evident through careful examination of the plot, characters, setting, and even the author herself.

Read More

More about Theme Of Wise Blood By Flannery O Connor

Related Topics

Open Document