Symbolism in Wise Blood Essay

A Car and A Church

Flannery O Connors novel Wise Blood (1952) is the story of a very confused man named Hazel Motes who lives in Taulkinham, Tennessee. Hazel has recently been let go from the military due to his injuries. During Hazels time spent in the military, he is told that he does not have a soul and believes this assumption. His grandfather was a preacher who taught Christianity from the hood of his car and also traveled. Hazel later creates his own church after he witnessed a blind man preaching about Christianity in the streets. At first, Hazel believes the preacher is sincere but later realizes the man is not actually blind but preaches for money. Hazel names his church the Church Without Christ. Ultimately, a person does not have to be clean in order to be saved at his church. Hazel buys a car, the Essex, to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and preach from the hood of it. Hazel and his grandfather believed two different things. Hazels grandfather preached about Christianity, while Hazel preached about there being a new Jesus to appear and reveal his face. Essentially Hazels car and his church, the Church Without Christ, both symbolize the soul in a state of sin, and Hazel is the example of a person whose life gets taken over by sin.

When Hazel buys the Essex, it is in very bad shape but somehow, he still believes it is unstoppable. The Essex represents his soul in a state of sin. Hazel first sees the car when he appears at Slades for the Latest, and he knows this is the right car. The car catches his sight from the back of the parking lot. He first notices the conditions of the car: It was a high rat-colored machine with large thin wheels and bulging headlights, when he got up to it, he saw that one door was tied on with rope and that it had an oval window in the back. This was the car for Hazel (69). Hazel does not have a license but still decides to purchase the car. He has a hard time driving the car, but he still believes this car could can anywhere without anything stopping it: I told you this car would get me anywhere I wanted to go (127). Hazels car comes in handy for more than just transportation; he uses it as a portable home if needed. He loads it with necessary supplies: Haze moved the two-by-four off the seat frame to make room to set up his pallet. He kept a pillow and an army blanket back there and he had a sterno stove and a coffee pot on the shelf under the back oval window (161).

Hazels car symbolizes his soul when he is on his religious journey in the fact that he uses the Essex to stand on when he preaches his new church and essentially uses it as his home. He stands on the hood of the car to preach like his grandfather once did. Hazels grandfather focused on Christianity while Hazel believes there is no Jesus. Hazel changes his location often to new parks to preach to the citizens passing by: The next night, Haze parked the Essex in front of the Odean Theatre and climbed up on it and began to preach (166). Here Hazel preaches about his new church, the Church Without Christ from the hood of his car. Learning from experience, Hazel gets to the point where he preaches the whole religion in only one sermon:

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody elses, but behind all of them, theres only one truth and that is that theirs is no truth, he called. No truth behind all truths is what this church and I preach! 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. Where is there a place for you to be? No place. (165)

Hazel was not catching the attention of anyone when he was preaching about is church. He then finds another guy who happens to be preaching the same religion as he. His acting does not intrigue Hazel, so he decides he will follow the preacher to learn about him. He asks the guy why he preaches about such a topic. The guy tells Hazel he is doing it because a guy named Hoover Shroats was paying him to teach it. Later, Hazel rams Hoovers car into a ditch with his own: Haze grounded the motor of the Essex again and shot forward. This time rammed the other car at such an angle that it rolled to the side of the road and over into a ditch (207). Hazel then ran over and killed the man on the road.

After all Hazel has witnessed and been through, he is realizing that his life is impure when his car gets destroyed, which means this disaster was a threat of hell to his broken soul. Hazel was off to a new city to preach his religion when an officer unexpectedly pulls him over. The officer was questioning Hazel and ask if he will drive up to the hill, so he could see the view over it. When they reach the top of the hill, the officer shoves Hazels car off the embankment to the ground: The car landed on its top, with the three wheels that stayed on, spinning. The motor bounced out and rolled some distance away and various pieces scattered this way and that (209). As Hazels car was destroyed, Hazel was also destroyed considering the car represents his soul. He is very upset and walks back to the boarding house with two odd objects; a bucket, and some quicklime. Mrs. Flood is the woman in charge at the house and asks what he is doing with these things. He responds oddly, blind myself (215). This was the turning point in which he realizes he is for sure impure. He thought if he blinded himself then it would pay for his impurity. After being blinded, he spends the majority of his time sitting on the porch of the house or walking. Mrs. Flood was randomly cleaning his room and finds his shoes filled with rocks and glass: She picked them up and looked into them as if she thought she might find something hidden there. The bottoms of them were lined with gravel and broken glass and pieces of small stone (226). She asks him why he put these things in his shoes and he says he does it to pay, talking about his price to pay for his soul being impure. One day, Mrs. Flood comes about Hazel sleeping and notices his shirt unbuttoned, with strands of barbed wire wrapped around his chest: The old shirt he wore to sleep in was open down the front and showed three strands of barbed wire, wrapped around his chest (229). She freaks and tells Mr. Motes he is doing odd things to himself. Essentially, these weird acts he is putting on are what he thinks, are the prices he is to pay for his soul being impure.

Hazels car symbolizes his soul in a state of sin. He uses his car to preach from the hood of it his religion. When the Essex is destroyed by the police officer, his soul is also destroyed and changed from believing there is no Jesus, to believing in Jesus. He eventually walks on rocks, sleeps with barbed wire, and blinds himself at the end of the novel in reaction to his theory that he is impure. Hazels gruesome actions slowly but surely end his life. His religious views at the end of the novel are based on Jesus and being clean and pure. This gives one the idea that Hazel eventually ends up home, or in Heaven.

Work Cited

O Connor, Flannery. Wise Blood. 1952. New York: Farrar, 2007. Print.