Wise Blood appeared as Flannery O'Connor's first book in 1952, and she would later describe it as “a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui”. Like her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away, it is preoccupied with failed preachers, wrecked automobiles, the denial of vocation and the suffering that accompanies it. The story of Hazel Motes and his failed struggle to escape the shadow of his faith was initially greeted as a satire of religious fanaticism or a psychological inquiry into it. However, critics had to reconsider its religious themes after O'Connor's author's note to the 1962 second edition in which she implicitly proclaimed her own faith, declaring: “That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and de

This article in full comprises 1194 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

Published 26 July 2002

Citation: McGill, Robert James. "Wise Blood". The Literary Encyclopedia. 26 July 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8824, accessed 9 February 2010.]