Wiseblood (O'Connor)

In Wise Blood, O’Connor’s protagonist, Hazel Motes seems imprisoned by his ‘destiny’ to become a preacher. Though he denies the existence of Jesus, Hazel is continually seeking redemption. O'Connor illustrates the need for faith, despite the denial of it. When someone tries to refute the existence of God, one is ironically only confronted by the existence of God. Hazel’s attempt to run away from God transforms the novel from bizarre comedy to an intense and searching study of the problem of redemption in the modern world.

The narrative encompasses the uncanny and the grotesque, and depicts scenes of horror and violence. Flannery O’Connor reflects her concern with questions of religious faith. Central themes include: the individual’s existential search for self and meaning; the search for and redemption; the question of faith and the conflict of good versus evil.
In the novel, O'Connor revisits her recurring biblical motif of an emotionally cut-off youth returning home (Prodigal Son) and the theme of the struggle of the individual to understand Christianity from a simply idiosyncratic core. Hazel Motes mocks communal and social understandings of Christianity, considering the followers of wandering, Protestant preachers as unwise and ill-advised, and sets out to deny God and Christ as persistently as possible.

Against everything, Motes is continually identified as a preacher by those in the community. Enoch Emery, a friend of Motes who searches for the ‘new Jesus’, ascertains that certain people have ‘wise blood’- meaning that the ‘blood’ knows even if the ‘mind’ fails to realize the truth.

Hazel is preoccupied with and fixated on salvation redemption and preachers. Ironically he is constantly endeavoring to save people from salvation, and ultimately becomes the founder of The Church Without Christ- a place where there is no salvation, no healing, where "the deaf don't hear, the blind don't see, the lame don't walk, the dumb don't talk, and the dead stay that way," and, in the end, becomes somebody who has chosen an austere life of self-denial.

Hazel states that he does not need to run away from anything 'cause I don't [he doesn’t] believe in anything”. Growing up, Hazel has come to associate the Lord with retribution and ill will, consequently leading to his need to eradicate faith and God from his life. Without Christ dying for our sins there can be no guilt and no need for salvation or redemption. It is this inner turmoil and existential quest for self experienced by Hazel that drives the narrative of the story.