THE ANALYSIS OF THE GROTESQUE CHARACTERISTICS IN FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S NOVEL WISE BLOOD
A THESIS BY:
MELYANA
REG. NO: 030705039
NORTH SUMATERA UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LETTERS
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT MEDAN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
What a nice gift I could finish this thesis! I spent several months in analyzing and now this thesis can fulfill the requirement to get my Sarjana Sastra at faculty of Letters in North Sumatra University. In the process, I received many helps from many people that always assists me. I love to thank to everyone who helped me during the writing of this thesis as well as during my time in university. I give my greatest thanks to The Almighty God, Jesus Christ, who always be my side. Thank You for the wonderful grace and love You give. Thank You that you always leads my way. And thank You for everyday I spend with my family and friends. I love to show my respect, to always honor You and may I bring You highest praise in everything I do.
I also would like to thank:
1. The Dean of Faculty of Letters North Sumatra University, Drs. Syariffudin, M. A, PhD, and all of the assistants and administrators.
2. The Chief and Secretary of English Department, Dra. Swesana Mardia Lubis, M. Hum and Drs. Yulianus Harefa M.Ed. TESOL.
3. Dra. T. Thyrhaya Zein, M. A as my supervisor and my Co-Supervisor, Drs. Siamir Marulafau, M. Hum, for their help and assistance in the process of finishing this thesis.
4. All of the lecturers of English Department.
6. To my late father, A. Buulóló, thank you for every love and wisdom you gave to me. You are really a great father. It is my dream to make you always proud of me and I am sure I could make it come true because I know you are always be with me. I thank God that I have you as my father. I love you Dad! To my beloved mother, B. Hondró, you are a wonderful mother. Thank you for your prayers, endless love, patience, and faith on me. I pray that God gives you His blesses everyday. I love you so much.
7. To my brothers and sisters (brother Anthony, brother Talu, brother Julius, Mama Nori, brother Bazi, sister Mel and Uni), thank you for everything you give to me.
8. To my brother Lefrans, sister Corry and sister Maey, I really thank you for your prayers, advice, guidance, supports and patience. I am so blessed to have you all.
lucky having a friend like you. The last but not least, to my Junior High Schoolmate: Fitria, Ira, and Mimi.
My hope is that this thesis will be useful for every reader. I would appreciatively accept every critic and suggestion for the improvement of this thesis.
Medan, November 2007
ABSTRAK
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i
ABSTRACT iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS v
1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background of the Study 1
1.2 Problem of the Study 3
1.3 Objective and Significance of the Study 4
1.4 Scope of the Study 4
1.5 Method of the Research 4
1.6 Review of Related Literature 5
2. A BRIEF EXPLANATION OF GROTESQUE 7
2.1 Grotesque 7
2.2 Grotesque Characteristics 9
2.3 Southern Grotesque 14
2.4 The Relation between Author and Grotesque 16 3. THE ANALYSIS OF THE GROTESQUE
CHARACTERISTICS IN O’CONNOR’S WISE BLOOD 20
3.1 Monster 20
3.2 Violence 23
3.3 Absurd 25
3.4 Mystery 27
3.5 Comic 31
3.6 Symbol 37
3.7 Irony 40
4. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 42
4.1 Conclusion 42 4.2 Suggestion 43 BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDICES
Abstract
Literature must be always interesting; it must have a structure and an aesthetic purpose, a total coherence and effect, and it must stand in recognizable relation to life (Rene Wellek, 1956: 212). Literature must give the readers pleasure and knowledge, and can add their intellectual. In literature, we can find three genres. One of the literary genre, prose, is often classified into some other forms, such as novel, romance, short story, and biography.
The novel, as Richard Taylor says in his book Understanding the Element of Litarature (1981: 46), is the modern or living form of narrative fiction which often shares constructional features, subject matter and themes derived from the epic, romance, allegory and satire, it remains distinctively separates from them. One sub-form of novel, gothic is very popular from the 1760s onwards until the 1820s. Gothic has had a considerable influence on fiction since (still apparent in the 1990s) and is of much importance in the evolution of the ghost story and the horror story. Most Gothic novels are prose forms that contain horror stories or tales of mystery, intended to chill the spine and curdle the blood.
As a subgenre of Gothic style, Southern Gothic could be considered as a style of writing practiced by many writers of the American South whose stories set in that region are characterized by grotesque, macabre, or fantastic incidents (http://en wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Gothic). Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Literature must be always interesting; it must have a structure and an aesthetic purpose, a total coherence and effect, and it must stand in recognizable relation to life (Rene Wellek, 1956: 212). Literature must give the readers pleasure and knowledge, and can add their intellectual. In literature, we can find three genres. One of the literary genre, prose, is often classified into some other forms, such as novel, romance, short story, and biography.
The novel, as Richard Taylor says in his book Understanding the Element of Litarature (1981: 46), is the modern or living form of narrative fiction which often shares constructional features, subject matter and themes derived from the epic, romance, allegory and satire, it remains distinctively separates from them. One sub-form of novel, gothic is very popular from the 1760s onwards until the 1820s. Gothic has had a considerable influence on fiction since (still apparent in the 1990s) and is of much importance in the evolution of the ghost story and the horror story. Most Gothic novels are prose forms that contain horror stories or tales of mystery, intended to chill the spine and curdle the blood.
uses these tools not for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South.
One of the most notable features of the Southern Gothic is the grotesque. It is a term applied to a decorative art in sculpture, painting, and architecture, characterized by fantastic representations of human and animal forms often combined into formal distortions of the natural to the point of absurdity, ugliness, or caricature. It was so named after the ancient paintings and decorations found in the underground chambers (grotte) of Roman ruins. By extension, grotesque is applied to anything having the qualities of grotesque art: absurd, ugly, incongruous, abnormal, unnatural, ironic, bizarre, macabre, and fantastic. Modern critics use “the grotesque” to refer to special types of writing, to kinds of characters, and to subject matters. This includes situations, places, or stock characters that often possess some cringe-inducing qualities, typically racial bigotry and egotistical self-righteousness, but enough good traits that readers find themselves interested nevertheless.
A grotesque character is a person who took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live by it Whenever fictional characters appear who are either physically or spiritually deformed and perform abnormal actions, the work can be called grotesque (Harmon William, 2000: 240).
Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), one of the best-known grotesque writers, draws the characters and setting from the rural South she knows so well, shortly after World War II and uses religious theme1
1
South is a Bible Belt country so the grotesque is apparently detected by readers when the
usually from an unlikely source, opens their eyes and offers them a chance at redemption.
For O’Connor, her native-American South is the perfect landscape against which to paint the grotesque characteristics, as the South is a violent place and a conservative one. O’Connor creates the absurd of the hero, Hazel Motes, who isolates himself from God and does not believe in society’s norm or law, and the monstrous figure, Enoch Emery who changes himself into gorilla suit. O’Connor uses number 666 to symbolize Hazel of Hazel’s nihilist, and Hazel’s car is to symbolize Hazel pulpit. There is much violence through the Taulkinham’s people, the irony and comic quality. O’Connor also creates mystery that leaves the readers with many questions in their mind.
I select Wise Blood to be analyzed because I feel interested in the grotesque characteristics: the monstrous quality, the violent characters, the usage of symbol, the comic element, the irony, the absurdity, and the mystery of redemption that O’Connor creates in her novel.
1.2 Problem of the Analysis
1.3 Objective and Significance of the Analysis
The objective of the analysis is to find out the characters’ rejection of Jesus that causes the characters have grotesque characteristics, such as: monster, violence, absurd, mystery, comic, symbol, and irony in Wise Blood. In accordance with the title of the thesis, the main purpose of this analysis is to prove that there are grotesque characteristics in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and that theoretically, grotesque exists in literature, not only in art.
1.4 Scope of the Analysis
I will analyze O’Connor’s grotesque characteristics in her Wise Blood. In doing this thesis, I will limit the analyzing by focusing on the characters’ rejection of Christ that causes grotesque characteristics in Wise Blood: monster, violence, absurd, mystery, comic, symbol, and irony in order to make the discussion will not go far from the main topic because the scope of literature is very wide.
1.5 Method of Research
speech, actions, and dialogues with the intention that the readers could get easier which quotation I mean in the explanations.
According to Wellek and Warren in their book Theory of Literature, there are two kinds of approach in analyzing a literary work. They are extrinsic approach which relates the literary works to the other subjects such as psychology, society, thought, and biography, and intrinsic approach that is emphasizes on the elements of literature itself, such as characters, theme, point of view, plot, and others. I use intrinsic method in establishing my analysis, because my analysis is based on the text of works.
1.6 Review of Related Literature
a. Theory of Literature, by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren.
In this book, there are complete definitions of literature and the explanation of literary genre. Wellek also gives two kinds of approaches in analyzing a literary work, namely intrinsic and extrinsic approach.
b. O’Connor Collected Works, by Sally Fitzgerald.
Sally Fitzgerald made this book after Flannery O’Connor died. It consists of O’Connor’s novels, short stories, and letters. We could find the novel Wise Blood, the author’s view on her works, and the reasons of why O’Connor is
c. Comedy Meaning and Form, by Robert W. Corrigan.
In this book, Corrigan gives complete essay of famous writers such as Charles Baudelaire, Sigmund Freud, Wylie Sypher, Ruby Cohn, and Eric Bentley. In these essays, they write much about grotesque, violence, comic, mystery, and absurdity.
d. A Handbook to Literature, by Harmon William and C. Hugh Hotman. This book provides writers’ definitions of grotesque, such as Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Mann, William Van O’Connor and Sherwood Anderson. This book gives a brief definition of grotesque; either in art or in literature can be found in this book. In addition, we could recognize the grotesque characteristics.
e. The Literature of the United States of America, by Marshall Walker. Marshall Walker tells us clearly about the author relation to the grotesque in this book.
f. An analysis of Gothic Element in Edgar Allan Poe’s Three Short Stories, by Hendra Cipta Hasibuan (a thesis).
2. A BRIEF EXPLANATION OF GROTESQUE
2.1 Grotesque
Grotesque is a decorative style in which animal, human, and vegetative forms are interwoven and deformed to the point of absurdity (Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature: 495). This nonliterary sense of the word first entered the English language as a noun. The word comes ultimately from 16th-century Italian grottesea, deriving from grotta (cave), in allusion to certain caves under Rome in which painting in such a style were found. It came to be used as an adjective describing something in this style and hence to mean bizarre, incongruous, or unnatural, or anything outside the normal. The extension of the word 'grotesque' to literature and to non-artistic things took place in France as early as the sixteenth-century, but in England and Germany only in the eighteenth century. With this extension 'grotesque' took on a broader meaning. In literature the style is often used for comedy or satire to show the contradictions and inconsistencies of life.
For the modern critics, the “grotesque” refers to special types of writing, to kinds of characters, and to subject matters (Harmon William, 2000: 240). The interest in the grotesque is usually considered an outgrowth of interest in the irrational, distrust of any cosmic order, and frustration at humankind’s lot in the universe. In this sense, grotesque is the merging of the comic and tragic, resulting from our loss of faith in the moral universe essential to tragedy and in rational social order essential to comedy. For the nineteenth-century critics, grotesque is a deplorable variation from the normal. Thomas Mann (1875-1955) sees it as the “most genuine style” for the modern world and the “only guise in which the sublime may appear” now. Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) seems to mean the same thing when she calls the grotesque character “man forced to meet the extremes of his own nature.”
grotesque can be found in the characters and situations in the works of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O’Connor, Eugene Ionesco, Mervyn Peake, and Joseph Heller, among many others.
2.2 Grotesque Characteristics
Grotesque represents forms melting into one another. Like Roman’s ornaments or paintings, which flowers, genii, men and beast, buildings, etc are mingled together, literary work should combine grotesque characteristics with the intention that the literary work could be called grotesque.
O’Connor presents many grotesque characteristics in Wise Blood, but I will analyze seven characteristics only, namely: monster, violence, absurd, mystery, comic, symbol, and irony.
2.2.1 Monster
The characters with monster quality tend to be demonic. The figures of grotesque monsters, such as vampires, ghosts, and the figure of animal, as well as deformed human beings such as dwarfed and hunchbacked figures to make life seem uncertain and directionless. Monster is a pejorative term for a grossly deformed individual. These severely deformed humans rarely survive.
Michael Foucault (1926-1984) in his book Abnormal explains the idea of the monster in the following way: the monster is essentially a mixture . . . of two realms: the animal and the human, as example, a man with the head of an ox or the man with a bird’s feet monsters. It is the blending, the mixture of two species: the pig with a sheep’s head is a monster. It is the mixture of two individuals: the person who has two heads and one body or two bodies and one head is a monster. It is the mixture of two sexes: the person who is both male and female is a monster. It is a mixture of life and death: the fetus born with a morphology that means it will not be able to live but that nonetheless survives for some minutes or days is a monster. Finally, it is a mixture of forms: the person who has neither arms nor legs, like a snake, is a monster.
2.2.2 Violence
Eric Bentley (1916- ) says that Charlie Chaplin is the best example in violence (Corrigan, 1981:203). Audiences love Charlie because he is less violent. He seems less violent because he put the violence in the other characters. The violence is done to him, not by him. In The Kid, Charlie finds himself literally holding the baby. By all means, he is going to become a charming and sentimental foster-father, but as he sits there with his feet in the gutter he notices an open drain, and he has almost thrown the baby sown it before sentiment comes again into his own.
2.2.3 Absurd
2.2.4 Mystery
The central of all human being has been to deal with the mysteries of life, with those aspects of the numinous which haunt our experience. There are certain abiding mysteries in human life that we can never totally understand or explain in rational terms no matter how hard we might try to do so. No matter how boldly each of us may assert that: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul,” we are nonetheless haunted by a nagging sense that there are unseen, undefined, or unknowable forces which shape our lives; that there is a script of someone else’s making which directs what happens to us. (Corrigan, 1981: 1)
Mystery has always been O’Connor important element in creating her grotesque novel. O’Connor’s grotesque always relates to God’s will which cannot be explained by natural determinable event or behavior because God cannot be judged by human knowledge (Fitzgerald, 1988: 954). O’Connor’s essential mystery of religious experience is suggested by pointing toward it rather than trying to describe it from inside.
2.2.5 Comic
As Sigmund Freud writes:
Thus a uniform explanation is provided of the fact that a person appears comic to us if in comparison with ourselves, he makes to great an expenditure that in both these cases our laughter expresses a pleasure sense of the superiority which we feel in relation to him. (Corrigan, 1981: 168)
superiority (Corrigan, 1981: 316). There is a feeling of superiority when we compare ourselves to a laughable comic figure. The comic figure is the fool (Corrigan, 1981: 39). Being isolated, he serves as a “center of indifference,” from which position the rest of us may, if we will, look through his eyes and appraise the meaning of our daily life.
All the theorists of comic are based on some notions of incongruity, conflict, and contradictory. Incongruity is effectively used in all dramatic forms: serious and comic. It can produce dire emotion as well as side splitting laughter. Conflict is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of need, values, and interest between people. And contradictory means deny the truth of something said or written.
2.2.6 Symbol
2.2.7 Irony
Irony is very significant in grotesque. Irony is an implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. Three kinds of irony:
a. Verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something.
b. Dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know.
c. Situational of situation is a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results.
2.3 The Southern Grotesque
displacement, gratuitous violence, and outrageous hostility. Possibly these similar traits represent a kindred response to the stultifying effects of traditional antebellum plantation society, which in a resistance view functioned only through blindness to the horrors inherent in slavery and through pretentious rituals of honor and obedience. In stories such as The Masque of the Red Death and The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe presents terrifying, irrational inversions of order.
His characters' obsession with control explodes into bizarre excesses and disfiguring disease.
Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams apply different kinds of gothic effects in some of their works, often as they address alienation and disorder in modern southern settings. Yet the most interesting, and most radical inheritors of the Grotesque are women writers of the later modernist era, Carson McCullers (1917-1967) and Flannery O'Connor, who developed this sensibility into very different strands. McCullers in The Ballad of the Sad Café and O’Connor in stories such as Good Country People, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, and Revelation displace the horrors of a world without morality or reason onto
Flannery O'Connor's affinity for the grotesque is unique because her explanations and usages are tied to her firm sense of spiritual realities that southerners, she says, have always been more ready to acknowledge than other Americans are. Her imagined South is defined as that "Christ-haunted landscape" in which characters can be forgiven anything except spiritual complacency. Epiphanies occur for O'Connor's ideal modern readers when they experience a sense of the uncanny (translated for O'Connor into spiritual grace) through the grotesque mode's combining of strange, often violent "discrepancies" or oppositions in plot, character or imagery. Following O'Connor, and deeply indebted to her, are several contemporary southern writers who are interested in her use of the Grotesque as a way to comment on a stultifying, spiritually arid modern landscape. Cormac McCarthy, Harry Crews, Barry Hannah, Tim McLaurin, Lewis Nordan and Larry Brown apply the principles of the Grotesque in works of fiction that often are considered under a separate rubric. Like O'Connor's grotesque comedies, some of these writers' works can be violently comic, while others are more likely to shock or repulse readers through raw portrayals of life at its grimmest.
2.4 The Author and Grotesque
works partly because the most enduring childhood influence on her was a volume called The Humerous Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, partly because she wants to delight in sheer originality, and particularly because she wants to show people who think God is dead that the Holy Ghost infuses grace into the most improbable poor white souls of the Southern Bible belt.
O’Connor uses grotesque characters in most her works because of the influence of The Humerous Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. These tales consists of grotesque characters, one about a young man who was too vain to wear his glasses and consequently married his grandmother by accident; another about a fine figure of a man who in his room removed wooden arms, wooden legs, hair piece, artificial teeth voice box, etc; another about the inmates of a lunatic asylum who take over the establishment and run it to suit themselves.
The rest of what I read was Slop with a capital S. the Slop period was followed by the Edgar Allan Poe period which lasted for years and consisted chiefly in a volume called The Humerous Tales of EAPoe. I went to a progressive high school where one did not read if one did not wish too; I did not wish to (except the Humerous Tales etc.) (Fitzgerald, 1988: 950)
When one Southern character speaks, regardless of his station in life, an echo of all Southern life is heard. This help to keep Southern fiction from being a fiction of purely private experience (Fitzgerald, 1988: 855)
Most people in the South lose their faith of God. As a pious writes, O’Connor wants to show people who think God is dead that the Holy Ghost infuses grace into the most improbable poor white souls of the Southern Bible belt. Peter W. Williams writes in his book America’s Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-first Century (2000: 287) that most evangelicals in South
America were united in their endorsement of a strict code of personal moral behavior, which forbade smoking, alcoholic beverages, gambling, theater and movie going, and even, especially among Pentecostals, the wearing of neckties for men and the use of cosmetics. But it contrasts with the reality, that a cultural analyst W. J. Cash there is “orgiastic religion” in the region’s tradition. O’Connor’s usage of grotesque IS to emphasize the salvation through the mystery of life to remind the Southerners that God is real and salvation really exists. In one of the letter published as The Habit of Being she writes:
O’Connor realizes that the Southern readers she faces are people who do not believe in God’s grace. The God’s grace is that God comes to the earth as a Man2
2
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the
3. THE ANALISYS OF GROTESQUE CHARACTERISTICS IN WISE BLOOD
In this chapter, I will explain the characteristics of grotesque in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. The grotesque characteristics that are discussed are monster, violence, absurd, mystery, comic, symbol, and irony. I find the characteristics of grotesque from the quotation of actions, dialogues, and speech of the characters. The usage of numbers for every quotation is to make easier for the readers to know the quotations I mean in the explanations.
3.1 Monster
The grotesque is not a phenomenon solely of the twentieth century, nor even of modern civilization. It exists as an artistic mode in the west at least as far back as the early Christian period of Roman culture, where there evolved a style of combining human, animal, and vegetable elements, intricately interwoven in painting. Grotesque refers to the monstrous details in gothic design. Monstrous quality of the grotesque constituted but the fusion of different realms as well as by a definite lack of proportion and organization.
story of Enoch after he becomes Gonga the gorilla. Enoch he will never be himself anymore for he has buried his clothes (1).
(1) Burying his clothes was not a symbol to him of burying his former self; he only knew he wouldn’t need them any more. He discovered while he did this that he still had his shoes on, and when he finished, he removed them and threw them from him. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 111)
According to Ruby Cohn (1922- ), the grotesque has been identified by its assimilation of animal and human worlds, of real and dream worlds (Corrigan, 1981: 295). Enoch is the best example of describing the assimilation. He wants to escape his dreary life style but in his case instead of the more usual longing to be like a film star or pop singer, he sees his way to fame by dressing ‘up’ as a gorilla. Enoch, who considers that he has “wise blood” just like his father, believes that his “wise blood” orders him to transform. Wearing the “gorilla suit,” he becomes a grotesque figure literally and vanishes with citizens of Taulkinham. Enoch mixes himself into of two forms: a human and an inanimate thing. Enoch’s monstrous quality is emphasized by the changing of the usage of the pronoun. Enoch is not called with “he” anymore, but Enoch is called with “it” after Enoch changes himself into the gorilla he admires.
(2) In the certain light, one of his lean white legs could be seen to disappear and then the other: a black heavier shaggier figure replaced his. For an instant, it had two heads, one light and one dark, but after a second, it pulled the dark back head over the other and corrected this. It buried itself with certain hidden fastening and what appeared to be minor adjustments of its hide…for a time after this, it stood very still and didn’t do anything. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 111-112)
a "complex pattern of behavior present in every specimen of a particular species, that is innate, and that cannot be overridden." Drives such as sex and hunger cannot be considered instincts, as they can be overridden. O’Connor writes Enoch as a character who does things based on his instinct, waits for something he does not know to happen is to emphasize Enoch monstrous characteristic. In (3), even O’Connor compares Enoch to a bird, an animal with instinct.
(3) Sometimes he didn’t think, he only wondered; then before long he would find himself doing this or that, like a bird finds itself building a nest when it hasn’t actually been planning to. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 73)
(4) That morning Enoch Emery knew when he woke up that today the person he could show it to was going to come. He knew by his blood. He has wise blood like his daddy. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 44) (5) He stood there a minute as if he were looking for somebody and then he sat down stiffly on the grass. He had on a blue suit and a black hat. He sat with his knees drawn up “Well, I’ll be dog,” Enoch said, “Well, I’ll be dog.”
MacAndrew writes that the monster tends to be demonic and pictures them as a directionless grossly deformed individual. Enoch is called having the monstrous quality for he does evil and gross things. Enoch hides in the bushes while spying on women at the local swimming and he does it everyday (6). Stirred by his Wise Blood, Enoch steals mummy (7), a shrunken man from museum and gives it to Hazel Motes because he thinks it is the new “jesus”. Enoch also steals a gorilla costume, dons it and then buries his old clothes that he comes into his own world. At first it expresses happiness, but then it scares people away as if he has become an animal (8). Clearly the monstrous figure is portrayed here.
and watch them. There was one woman who came every Monday who wore a bathing suit that was split on each hip. At first he thought she didn’t know it, and instead of watching openly on the bank, he had crawled into some bushes, snickering to himself, and had watched from there. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 44)
(7) When he’d got back to his room, he had taken the new jesus out the sack and, hardly daring to look at him, had laid him in the gilted cabinet; then he had sat down on the edge of his bed to wait. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 98)
(8) A man and woman sitting close together on a rock just off the highway were looking across a open stretch of valley at a view of the city in the distance and they didn’t see the shaggy figure approaching. She, as soon as she turned her eyes, fled screaming down the highway. The gorilla stood as though surprises and presently its arm fell to its side. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 112)
3.2 Violence
Grotesque elements that often shock the readers are the violence and the comic. Violence is often an element in O’Connor’s stories; in fact, she once said that her own faith and illness made her conscious of the constant presence of death in the world. It explains the large number of deaths in her stories, and it may account for the strong sense of danger in many of them. In “Good Country People,” for example, Hulga’s wooden leg is stolen by a dishonest Bible salesman. In “Revelation,” Mrs. Turpin is attacked in the doctor’s office by a girl who has suddenly gone mad. Events and characters such as these are the source of the charge that O’Connor’s characters are grotesque.
Violence could be defined as the use of physical force against a person or other living thing causing Motes is one O’Connor’s character who causes someone dead (9). Hazel’s violence is dramatized by a fact that he is a preacher. Hazel is a prophet who has preached his church, but instead of forgiving, Hazel kills Solace Layfield, Hoover Shoat’s false prophet, who imitates him.
(9) Haze gave him a hard slap on the back and he was quiet. He leaned down to hear if he was going to say anything else but he wasn’t breathing anymore. Haze turned around and examined the front of the Essex to see if there had been any damage done to it. The bumper had a few splurts of blood on it but that was all. Before he turned around and drove back to town, he wiped them of with a rag. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 115)
Hazel rejects the existence of Jesus and he preaches his nihilist to people. However, when there is someone who imitates what he does. Hazel goes mad because the man does it not because of his faith, but in order to get money. Hazel deny to have faith to Jesus, but when people use the faith to mock or get money, he becomes angry. Hazel murders Solace and does not give him a chance to speak or defense at all.
(10) “Take off that hat,” haze said
“Listenhere,” the man said, beginning to cough, “what you want? Quit just looking at me. Say what you want.”
“You ain’t true,” Haze said. “What do you get up on top of a car and say you don’t believe in what you do believe in for?” … “You ain’t true. You believe in Jesus.”
“Take off that hat and that suit”…”Two things I can’t stand, a man that ain’t true and one that mocks what is.”
”Never giver no rest. Stole theter car. Never told the truth to my daddy or give Henry what, never give him…,” he said through a kind of bubbling in his throat.
“You shut up now,” Haze said. “Jesus…” the man said.
The definition of violence often is widened to include threats of physical force and substantially abusive language and harassing actions. Most Hazel’s actions are violent because he never gives attention while someone is speaking. Hazel is pictured as a violent person since the first chapter. He does not look when Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock is talking to him and answers her impolitely (11) and (12). He also acts that could cause people irritating. He does not give attention to a boy who is speaking to him in a used-car market (14) and rejects Enoch violently while Enoch wants to be his friend (13).
(11) “I guess you’re going home,” she said, turning back to him again. He didn’t look, to her, much over twenty… he didn’t answer her or move his eyes from whatever he was looking at. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 3)
(12) “Are you going home?” Mrs. Hitchcock asked.
He looked at her sourly and gripped the black hat by the brim. “No, I ain’t,” he said in a sharp high nasal Tennessee voice. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 5)
(13) “Look,” Haze said, “I’m going where I’m going, two doors from here. I got a woman, see? And that’s where I’m going, to visit her. I don’t need to go with you… Get away from me.”
“People ain’t friendly here. You ain’t from here but you ain’t friendly neither.”
Haze didn’t answer him. He went on with his neck drawn close to his shoulder blades as if he were cold. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 32)
(14) Haze started off toward the back of the lot where he saw a particular car. “Hey!” the boy yelled. “You don’t just walk in here like that. I’ll show you what I got to show,” but Haze didn’t pay any attention to him. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 38)
3.3 Absurd
filling the void with a purpose set forth by a higher power, often a belief in God or adherence to a religion.
(15) “If Jesus had redeemed you, what different would it make to you? You wouldn’t do nothing about it. Your faces wouldn’t move, neither this way nor that, and if it was three crosses there and Him hung on the middle one, that one wouldn’t mean no more to you and me than the other two. Listen here. What you need is something to take the place of Jesus, something that would speak plain. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 80)
One of absurd characteristic is absurd hero’s sense of isolation from God, humanity and love. Ever since his unhappy youth he had been thinking that Jesus must be the problem and that is why he wants to get rid of the ragged figure that moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. Hazel isolates himself from God and ignores God’s grace. The feeling of not being loved by family gives him a feeling that God never loves him. That God’s grace does not exist is preached to show hazel’s rebellion of God.
He preaches something that contrasts with the universe (read: Christians) knows as the truth. Hazel preaching is that there is no heaven or hell, that makes sense to the readers that for Hazel life is meaningless or what human has is the here-and-now (though in the end of the story he will back to the Figure he rejects).
One of absurd characteristic is a ‘going away from’ a norm, a questioning of the validity of human reason itself (from which our perceptions of natural laws arise). The norm is considered useless and meaningless.
(17) When Haze started across the street, Enoch yelled, “Don’t you see theter light! That means you got to wait!”
The policeman looked at him without saying anything. A few people stopped. He rolled his eyes at them. “Maybe you thought the red ones was for white folks and the green ones for niggers,” he said.
“Yeah I thought that,” haze said. “That your hand off me.” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 24)
(18)“Where’s your license?” the patrolman said. “I don’t have a license.” Haze said.
“Well,” the patrolman said in a kindly voice, “I don’t reckon you need one.”
“Well I ain’t got one if I do,” haze said. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 117)
From the examples above, it is clearly known that for Hazel, norm is not for him. It is a must that a person who has car should have a driver license, but for Hazel it is not. Hazel keeps walking while the light is red, not because he does not know the rule, but it is because he does not care.
3.4 Mystery
Mystery is something unexplained, unknown, or kept secret. The essential mystery of life is what the interesting to O’Connor in even the most grotesque elements of her stories. In her letters, O’Connor speaks of her quest to understand the mechanism and mystery behind a good story:
suggest both the world and eternity. The action or gesture I’m talking about would have to be on the anagogical level, that is, the level which has to do with the Divine life and our participation in it. It would be a gesture that transcended any neat allegory that might have been intended or any pat moral categories a reader could make. It would be a gesture which somehow made contact with reality. (http://www.mrrena.com/misc/flannery.shtml)
O’Connor insists that God’s will is not explained by natural, determinable event or behavior. It gives us the reason why O’Connor creates characters who cannot be explained as a way of shocking her readers into a recognition of myth as mystery. Hazel Motes is one of O’Connor character whose behavior cannot be understood.
(19) He stopped at a supply store and bought a tin bucket and a sack of quicklime and then he went on to where he lived, carrying these… His landlady was sitting on the porch, looking a cat. “What you going to do with that, Mr. Motes?” she asked.
“Blind myself,” he said and went on in the house. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 119) It is not clear why Hazel Motes does something extreme after killing Solace Layfield, the false prophet. Hazel, who always looks for Asa Hawks, the blind preacher3
, to ask why Asa Hawks blinds himself for his faith, blinds himself with quicklime after he murders the false prophet, who preaches for money.
(20) She stood for some time, holding the shoes, and finally she put them back under the cot. In a few days she examined them again and they were lined with fresh rocks. Who’s he doing this for? She asked herself. What’s he getting out of doing it? Every now and then she would have an intimation of something hidden near her but out of her reach. “Mr. Motes,” she said that day when he was in her kitchen eating his dinner, “what do you walk on rocks for?”
“To pay,” he said in harsh voice. “Pay for what?”
“Mind your business,” he said rudely. “You can’t see.” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 125)
Readers have questions as Mrs. Flood asks when she sees Hazel Motes treats himself: why would anybody blind himself? Why does Hazel Motes walk on rocks? Why does Hazel Motes strap barbed wire to his body? Why not just repents and follows God he leaves before? What the readers know is that Hazel does these things after he kills Solace Layfield.
O’Connor writes in her letter to Carl Hartman (Fitzgerald: 920) that Haze does not come into his absolute integrity until he blinds himself. Vision becomes real only after he loses his sight. Nevertheless, O’Connor does not give a clear explanation more in the novel. At the end of the novel, the readers attention is drawn inward, from Mrs. Flood into Hazel’s ravaged eyes, and then into Mrs. Flood’s mind’s eyes. Only then, we do have the image of Hazel moving farther and farther away until he becomes a pinpoint of light. Hazel dies, but he gets salvation. The story ends and O’Connor does not give any clues further. O’Connor leaves the story as mystery. Readers will never know why Hazel could achieve redemption through his blindness. Is it really the way to achieve salvation? However for O’Connor, God’s gift of salvation cannot be limited by human’s knowledge. It is the mysterious way of God. O’Connor writes to Miss A in one of her letter:
In her letters O’Connor says that Hazel’s sacrifice will be paid because Haze actually believes in the redemption. O’Connor adds that if Hazel has not believed in it, he would not have to reject it so vigorously, because as the readers see, the society is not forcing it on him. But it will leave a question, how a self-blind, or as O’Connor calls it sacrifice, could bring Hazel to redemption after he kills someone. Though O’Connor gives explanations on her letters, the explanations end with statement that God’s grace of salvation is a mystery.
In Wise Blood, O’Connor often depicts Hazel with “as-if” construction. There are 98 as-if construction in all, and Hazel is associated with 47 of them. It shows us that O’Connor makes a point that it is necessary to describe Hazel’s action with as-if construction. The examples follow:
(21) Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minutes at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 1)
(22) He had seen the shadow that came down over her face, and pulled her mouth down as if she wasn’t any more satisfied dead that alive, as if she were going to spring up and shove the lid back and fly out and satisfy herself: but they shut it. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 14)
(23) His black hat sat on his head with a careful, placed expression and his face had a fragile look as if it might have been broken and stuck together again, or like a gun no one knows is loaded. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 37)
(24) He pulled himself over into the front of the car and eased his foot on the starter and the Essex rolled off quietly as if nothing were the matter with it. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 92)
external description of him, so after all readers cannot guess what makes Hazel act in that way. The as-if blocks readers from agreeable meaning: in effect, we are always unsatisfied on the threshold of meaning.
3.5 Comic
Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car. The train was racing trough tree tops that fell away at intervals and showed the sun standing, very red, on the edge of the farthest woods. Nearer, the plowed fields curved and faded and the few hogs nosing in the furrows looked like large spotted stoned. Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock, who was facing Motes in the Section, said that she thought the early evening like this was the prettiest time of day and she asked him if he didn’t think so too. She was a fat woman with pink collars and cuffs and pear-shaped legs that slanted off the train seat and didn’t reach the floor. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 1)
This opening thrusts us immediately into O’Connor’s grotesque comic world. The physical setting is sketched in very briefly; the emphasis is on the peculiarities of character. From the very first pages of the novel, Hazel is rude, nervous, obnoxious, socially inept, and aggressively promoting his nihilist rejection of Jesus with everyone he meets.
All the theories of comic are based on some notion of incongruity, conflict, and juxtaposition of opposites or contradictory (http://davidlavery.net/Grotesque/Major_Artists_Theorists/theorists/thomson/tho
mson3.html). O’Connor uses these incongruity, conflicts and contradictions to
bring her readers into her comic world.
should see clearly and sometimes soar but the body should feed and sleep; that the human spirit should feel perennial and the matter of which spirit is a function should be changing always.
Since Wise Blood is a comic, It has incongruity. It is incongruous that Asa Hawks, the city’s established sidewalk preacher, a fixture in black hat and dark glasses, who does not believe in Jesus but pretends he has blinded himself before a crowd of people on the street without any result, such as salvation, rich purpose, etc, as we know he gets nothing since he pretends to be blind.
(25) Ten years ago at a revival he had intended to blind himself and two hundred people or more were there, waiting for him to do it. He had preached for an hour on the blindness of Paul, working himself up until he saw himself struck blind by a Divine flash of lightning and, with courage enough then, he had thrust his hands into the bucket of wet lime and streaked them down his face; but he hadn’t been possessed of as many devil as were necessary to do it, but at that instant, they disappeared, and he saw himself standing there as he was. He fancied Jesus, Who had expelled them, was standing there too, beckoning to him; and he had fled out of the tent into the alley and disappeared.
(26). “I knew when I first seen you, you were mean and evil,” a furious voice behind him said. “I seen you wouldn’t let nobody have nothing. I seen you were mean enough to slam a baby against a wall. I seen you wouldn’t never have no fun or let anybody else because you didn’t want nothing but Jesus!”
“I don’t want nothing but the truth! He shouted, “and what you see is the truth and I’ve seen it!” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 107)
(27) “That’s why I want ever’ one of you people to join the Holy Church of Christ Without Christ. It’ll cost you each a dollar but what is a dollar,” Onnie Jay Holly said.
“Listen! Haze shouted. “It don’t cost you any money to know the truth! You can’t know it for money!” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 87)
(28). “Two things I can’t stand,” Haze said, ”a man that ain’t true and one that mocks what is. You shouldn’t ever have tampered with me if you didn’t want what you got.” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 115)
Hazel has conflicts with everyone he meets. Hazel face turns an ugly red after a man pushes him back to the doorway when Hazel is waiting to get in the entrance of the diner (Fitzgerald, 1988:6-7). Hazel is mocked by his friends in army4
The internal conflict is Hazel’s struggle that takes place in his mind. He keeps rejecting Jesus by preaching The Church Without Christ (29), but he cannot get rid of the ragged figure who move from tree to tree in the back of his mind (Fitzgerald, 1988: 1265). Though Hazel calls himself nihilist, his mind cannot accept when someone mocks the ragged figure, like Enoch does
, and is told that he does not have any soul (Fitzgerald, 1988: 12). Hazel has conflict with Enoch Emery too. He does not feel interested to what Enoch says and always avoid him (Fitzgerald, 1988:13, 48, 49). Both look for “new jesus”, but the difference is that Hazel’s quest is a matter of life and death, whereas Enoch can mount only a pathetic imitation.
5
4
In the novel, O’Connor writes that they were not actually friends but he had to live with them. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 12)
(29) “My church is the Church Without Christ, lady,” he said. “If there’s no Christ, there no reason to have a set place to do it in.”(Fitzgerald, 1988: 59)
(30) Haze snatched the skin off the floor. He opened the outside door where the landlady thought there had once been a fire-escape, and flung out what he had in his hand. The rain blew in his face and he jumped back and stood, with a cautious look, as if he were bracing himself for a blow.(Fitzgerald, 1988: 106)
Hazel feels uncomfortable in having sex with Mrs. Watts and seducing Sabbath, Hawks’ daughter actually. Though his action of seducing is to prove that there is no sin (31), but his mind is not happy that makes him want to avoid the women (32), (33). This is also the conflict Hazel has in mind he cannot do what he thinks he should do.
(31) He felt that he should have a woman, not for the sake of the pleasure in her, but to prove that he didn’t believe in sin since he practiced what was called it; but he had had enough of her. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 62)
(32) Besides this reason, he didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Watts. The night before, after she was asleep, she had got up and cut the top of his hat out in an obscene shape. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 62) (33) He abandoned the notion of seducing her and tried to protect himself. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 82)
prove that sin does not exist. It is laughable that Hazel leaves his notion of seducing Sabbath and tries to protect himself from her.
(34) “What do you want to hide in my car for?” he said angrily. “I got business before me. I don’t have time for foolishness.” Then he checked his ugly tone and stretched his mouth a little, remembering that he was going to seduce her. “Yeah sure,” he said, “glad to see you.” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 66)
(35) He trained his eyes into her neck. Gradually she lowered her head until the tips of their noses almost touched but still he didn’t look at her. “I see you,” she said in a playful voice. “Git away!” he said, jumping violently. (Fitzgerald, 1988:70)
The contradiction also could be seen between Hazel appearance and his statement toward people around him. On the opening page, we meet Hazel Motes wearing a blue suit and with a stiff black broad-brimmed hat on his lap: and by both dress and manner looking for the entire world like a southern preacher. However, Hazel himself denies it. He wears a preacher suit but he does not want to be called or considered as a preacher (36), (37), and (38).
(36) He didn’t look, to her, much over twenty, but he had a stiff black broad-brimmed hat on his lap, a hat that an elderly country preacher would wear. His suit was a glaring blue and the price tag was still stapled on the sleeve of it. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 3)
(37) I never saw her before,” Haze said.
Where’d you hear about her? She don’t usually have no preachers for company.” He did not disturb the position of the cigar when he spoke; he was able to speak on either side of it.
“I ain’t any preacher,” haze said, frowning. “I only seen her name in the toilet.”
“You look like a preacher,” the driver said. “That hat looks like a preacher’s hat.”
“it ain’t,” Haze said, and leaned forward and gripped the back of the front seat. “It’s just a hat.” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 16)
Mrs. Watts eyed him steadily with only a slight smirk. Then she put her other hand under his face and tickled it in a motherly way. “That’s okay, son,” she said. “Momma don’t mind if you ain’t a preacher.” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 18)
Hazel preaches “The Church Without Christ”, but in fact he believes that Jesus is exist. Hazel always looks for and follows a blind-self preacher, Asa Hawks, because he still has curiosity of Christ’s preacher (39), (40). This proves that Hazel still has a doubt about his “The Church Without Christ” and can’t get rid of Jesus from his mind. Hazel thinks that someone who believes in Jesus and could sacrifice himself must be a good person. Hazel believes in God existence because he still keeps in his mind that God is good (41).
(39) Haze drew back
“What’d you follow me for?” “I never followed you,” Haze said.
“She said you were following,” the blind man said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the child. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 27)
(40) That evening Haze drove his car around the streets until he found the blind man and the child again. They were standing on a corner, waiting for the light to change. He drove the Essex at some distance behind them for about four blocks up the main street and then turned it after them down a side street. He followed them on into a dark section past the railroad yards and watched them go up on the porch of a box-like two-story house. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 58) (41) “You couldn’t be a bastard,” Haze said, getting very pale. “You must be mixed up. Your daddy blinded himself.” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 67)
O’Connor states that Wise blood is a comic novel (42). It is comic because the belief in Christ, that is the main matter in this novel, is a matter of life and death. Hazel’s effort to get rid of Christ ends with Hazel’s accepting of Christ because his not being able to which results Hazel gets the redemption.
congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupation. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no regret consequence. For them Hazel Motes’ integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel’s integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 1265)
Wise Blood is a comic novel for it gives the readers comic figure, named
Hazel Motes and Enoch emery. They are comic because they are laughable6
Ruskin says that a fine grotesque is the expression, in a moment, by a series of symbols thrown together in a bold and fearless connection, of truths which it would have a long time to express in any verbal way, and of which the , isolate themselves from God and from society. Wylie Sypher writes that the comic figure is the fool (Corrigan, 1981: 39). The fool can be the seer and the prophet. Hazel and Enoch are seers of “new jesus” (43) (44). The fool may be dwarfed and deformed. Enoch deforms his human form into a gorilla (Fitzgerald, 1988: 111-112)
(43) The Church Without Christ don’t have a jesus but it needs one! It needs a new jesus! Give me such a new jesus and you’ll see how far the Church without Christ can go!” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 80) (44) An unintelligible sound spluttered out of Enoch. He tried to bellow, but his blood held him back. He whispered, “Listen here, I got him! I mean I can get him! You know! Him! Him I shown you to. You seen him yourself!” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 81)
3.6 Symbol
connection is left for the beholder to work out for himself; the gaps, left or over leaped by the haste of the imagination, forming the grotesque character. A grotesque work must have symbols in it.
Symbols are objects, characters, or other concrete representations of ideas, concepts, or other abstractions. Like many writers, O’Connor always uses an object to represent her idea. As example, O’Connor gives symbolic or evocative names to her characters, and they are often worth considering in that light. Hazel Motes’ name seems to draw one attention to his cloudy or hazy vision, reminding the reader of the biblical injunction not to try to take the mote, a tiny particle, or speck from another’s eye until one has removed the beam from one’s own.
(45) “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank is in your own eye?” Matthew 7: 3
O’Connor’s picturing of Hazel’s eyes as strange eyes symbolize Hazel’s futile attempt to escape the truth while searching for its opposite. Hazel was trying to swap his faith in something for a faith in nothing.
(46) “I like his eyes,” she observes. “They don’t look like they see what he’s looking at but they keep on looking” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 61)
YOU” at the same time. O’Connor wants to show us Hazel’s nihilist and his inability of getting rid of Jesus all together.
(47) The highway was ragged with filling stations and trailer camps and roadhouses. After a while there were stretches where red gulleys dropped off on either side of the road and behind them there were patches of field buttoned together with 666 posts. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 41)
(48) He drove very fast out onto the highway, but once he had gone a few miles, he had the sense that he was not gaining ground. Shacks and filling stations and road camps and 666 signs passed him, and deserted barns with CCC snuff ads peeling across them, even a sign that said, “Jesus Died for YOU,” which he saw and deliberately did not read. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 117)
The important point for Ruskin (1819-1900) is that all symbolism is intrinsically grotesque; according to him, whenever we experience anything too great or too difficult for us to grasp fully, and he holds that most truths are beyond human beings, we encounter the grotesque. It is difficult to know what O'Connor’s purpose with her Essex. Car ownership is still considered as a symbol of affluence and personal freedom. Hazel once says, “Nobody with a good car needs to be justified,” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 64), and “I told you this car would get me anywhere I wanted to go,” (Fitzgerald, 1988: 72). O’Connor wants to emphasize Hazel’s freedom of what he believes and preaches. Hazel believes that the Essex is a ticket of freedom from Jesus. But, Fitzgerald writes that the Essex turns into Hazel’s pulpit to preach The Church Without Christ. The car symbolizes Hazel pulpit for he always preaches on the nose of the car.
(50) There, facing him under a street light, was a high rat-colored car and up on the nose of it, a dark figure with a fierce white hat on. The figure’s arms were working up and down and had thin, gesticulating hands, almost as pale as the hat. “Hazel Motes!” Enoch breathed, and his heart began to slam from side to side like a wild bell clapper. (Fitzgerald, 1988: 79)
3.7 Irony
Irony is the contrast between what a character thinks the truth is, as revealed in a speech or action, and what an audience or reader knows the truth to be. O’Connor gives this irony to the main character, Hazel Motes. Hazel thinks that he should do sin to prove that there is no sin (Fitzgerald, 1988: 62). People in common believe that sin exists and keep it as the universal truth. Everyone knows that action of seducing is sinful. Instead of avoiding it, Hazel does the seduction to prove that there is no sin in this world and that there is no judgment after death.
I’m going to preach there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from and no Redemption because there was no Fall and no Judgment because there wasn’t the first two (Fitzgerald, 1988: 59)
The irony is that where he started out preaching the Church Without Christ he ends up with Christ without a church. Hazel keeps his nihilist though it contrasts with common people’s belief. Hazel who thinks his belief as the truth and preaches it, in the end of the story gives up his nihilist, but has no time to preach what he believes at the end of his life. Hazel gets his salvation Hazel or turns entirely to an inner vision after he blinds himself.
4. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 4.1 Conclusion
Having done my analysis, I come to the conclusion that firstly the grotesque characteristics are reflected in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. The main character, Hazel Motes is pictured as an absurd man. Hazel preaches that there is no heaven or hell, and it shows us that life is meaningless for him. Hazel isolates himself from God and does not believe in society’s norm or law. Hazel is also described as a violent person for he is impolite to everyone he meets and kills someone who imitates him. O'Connor gives Enoch Emery, another character in Wise Blood, the monster quality by changing him into Gonga the gorilla, an
animal form. Enoch also does evil and gross things, just like a monster that always related to the evil things. Hazel’s irony is that where he started out preaching the Church Without Christ he ends up with Christ without a church.
Secondly, the usage of grotesque in this novel is the Southern grotesque. The setting and characters pictured in the novel are taken from the South. As a native of Georgia and a Roman Catholic, O’Connor depicts, in its entire comic and horrendous incongruity, the symbols, and the mysteries of divine grace in the “Christ haunted” Protestant South.
does not want to, or when he wears a preacher’s suit and hat but he does not want others think that he is a preacher. As the main character, Hazel Motes faces external and internal conflicts. Besides having conflict with himself, Hazel also has conflict with people around him. It is incongruous that Asa Hawks pretends to blind without any purpose or result he gets.
4.2 Suggestion
I would like to suggest the readers to read the novel Wise Blood to understand more clearly about what it is discussed here. Reading the novel, not only the summary, will help the readers to get the ideas of this thesis.
I also want to suggest the readers to make a comparison between this novel and other novel from different country so the readers know about different characteristics of grotesque found in their novels and also know about their culture.
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http://davidlavery.net/Grotesque/Major_Artist_Theorists/theorists/thomson/thoms on2.html
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APPENDICES
The Author’s Biography and Her Works
Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925 and died in 1964. She attended Peabody High School and Georgia State College for women (now Georgia College at Milledgeville). She got many awards, such as: American Academy grant, O. Henry award, Foundation grant, National Catholic Book award, and National Book award.
within the limits of her art with great commitment, artistic integrity, high technical skill, and frequent success.
She is primarily a writer of short stories. The collection A Good Man Is Hard To Find and the posthumous Everything That Rises Must Converge
contained nineteen examples of her best work in this form. The Complete Stories added twelve more. Her first novel, Wise Blood, was a weaving together of material originally written in short-story form. Her only other novel was The Violent Bear It Away. (She was working on a third novel at the time of her death
but apparently without the expectation of ever completing it.) Despite excellent elements in both her novels, O’Connor will survive as a master of the short-story form. Her stories were based on what she called “anagogical vision… the kind of vision that is able to see different levels of reality in one image or one situation.” It is this anagogical element that has led to very extensive examination of levels of meaning in her stories by many critics.
Wise Blood is the story of the preacher Hazel Motes, called, he believed, to
O’Connor’s short stories deal with simple Georgia people, hungry with passionate desire for a spiritual dimension that the nature of their lives and their beliefs denies them. The usual pattern in these stories is that of a desperate search through extreme, violent, and the grotesque actions that usually culminate in the entry of divine grace through some instrumentality that bestows salvation in the moment of death. The frantic and misdirected struggles of these human beings result in a violent but comic representation that seems in many ways to reflect the long tradition of American Southwestern humor, with its extreme portrayals of grotesque people in violent and unusual situation. Her work is most like that of Erskine Caldwell in terms of the grotesqueness of her characters, the extravagance of her actions, the sharp and vigorous starkness of her prose, and her kind of pervasive comic sense. However, where Caldwell presents his characters as people distorted as a result of economic deprivation, O’Connor’s world is the world of people rendered grotesque by their inability to satisfy their spiritual hungers. All of her characters can be explained in one sense in St. Augustine’s phrase, “Our souls are restless till they find rest in Thee.” Among her short stories of particular distinction are A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Good Country People, The Artificial Nigger, The Lame Shall Enter First, Revelation, Greenleaf, and the
short novel The Displaced Person.
The Summary of Wise Blood
The novel opened on a train as Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old man who returned home to Tennessee after four years service in the army. He had grown up in the town of Eastrod, but his parents and family were all dead. Hazel’s grandfather had been a preacher. Before Hazel had joined the army, he had intended to become a preacher. Now, he was trying to avoid Jesus, whom he saw as a ragged figure moving from tree to tree in the back of his mind.
Hazel traveled to the town of Taulkinham. When Hazel arrived in the city, he headed for the house of a prostitute, Leora Watts, as the step in asserting that sin was an irrelevant issue in his life. Then he met an 18-year-old boy named Enoch Emery who tried to become his friend, but Hazel rejected him. Hazel was attracted to a blind preacher named Asa Hawks, and to the preacher’s daughter, Sabbath Lily hawks. Hawks told him that he could not run away from Jesus, but Hazel told the preacher that Jesus did not exist.
Hazel bought a used car, an ancient, rat-colored Essex, for which he paid forty dollars. He used it exactly as his grandfather had used his Ford, as a platform to preach from. He started to preach on the street, preaching the Church without Christ. He changed his stiff, black preacher’s hat for a white panama hat.
what really happened was that Hawks had lost his nerve and never blinded himself. Hawks had only pretended to be blind.
Enoch Emery, meanwhile, had felt himself being transformed. He knew that something was going to happen to him, because he had “wise blood.” He knew by his blood, his sense of intuition or instinct. Enoch stole a shrunken man from a glass case in a museum, and took it to Hazel’s apartment, because he wanted to give Haze a new “jesus” for the Church without Christ. Sabbath hold the shrunken man like a baby in her arms, but Hazel took it and thrown it away.
Another preacher named Onnie Jay Holy listened to Hazel’s preaching, and Holy started to preach the Holy Church of Christ Without Christ. Holy tried to join forces with Hazel, in order to make money from preaching. But Hazel rejected Holy, calling him a liar. Hazel said that there was no such thing as a new “Jesus,” and that his church was the Church Without Christ.
Later, Hazel sneaked into Asa Hawks’ apartment, and discovered that Hawks was not blind. Hawks abandoned his daughter, and Sabbath became Hazel’s girlfriend.
Enoch Emery stole a gorilla costume from an actor who plays Conga, a giant gorilla being featured at the movie theaters, and walked along the highway.
Onnie Jay Holy, whose real name was Hoover Shoats, started preaching for money, and hired a prophet for his Holy Church of Christ without Christ. The prophet’s name was Solace Layfield.
The next morning, Haze was stopped by a police car on the highway. He did not have a driver’s license, and the police officer made him get out of his car, and pushed the car down an embankment. The car was smashed, and Haze walked back to town.
He blinded himself with lime, and was cared for by his landlady, Mrs. Flood, whom he paid his room and boarded every month from the check that he got from the government. He put gravel, stones and broken glass in his shoes, so that he walked with a limp. He got influenza, and became too weak to walk. He wrapped barbed wire around his chest.
