Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
analysis of flannery o'connor's writings
analysis of flannery o'connor's writings
flannery o'connor analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: analysis of flannery o'connor's writings
Flannery O’Connor once noted that all good stories are ones of conversion (Wood, 217), and Wise Blood is no exception. The central spiritual struggle of the book is that of the character Hazel Motes. The protagonist goes through not simply one but several conversions throughout the book. His spiritual quest is his realization of the Church Without Jesus, and his search for a new jesus. As analysis in this paper will elucidate, Hazel spiritual arc is a critique of approaches to knowing God. The first such method, nihilism, is a belief in nothing. This exists not only as a rejection of belief in an areligious sense, but is an active love of the concept of nothing itself. The second method comes in the debate of how one can come to know God, and whether or not one can accumulate concrete knowledge as a method of understanding the divine. O’Connor, as a Catholic, creates the window of an outsider to view the Protestant dominated South. From a Catholic perspective, Hazel Motes’s quest for an alternative approach to God is one which mirrors the alternative approach to God by the predominantly Protestant South. Hazel’s rejection of his paternal influences is not one which rejects religion or God, but instead is one which seeks his own path towards God based on his terms and conditions, and not His. Hazel’s spiritual trajectory is one which pursues a path of nihilism, to Gnosticism, to despair. His understanding of his own perception, especially sight, leads him to search for Jesus through both sight and non-sight, as he seeks a knowable, corporeal new jesus.
The reader is introduced to Hazel’s spiritual past early in the novel, through the description of his preacher grandfather. He was “a waspish old man who had ridden over three coun...
... middle of paper ...
...t to be distracted by abstract version of Christ, but instead wishes to find God through his own experience. He does not place faith in a Church With Christ, which commands redemption from on high. The Jesus of this church offers an abstract salvation that comes through the suffering of an unknowable God. Instead the redemption Hazel seeks that comes through a grotesque corporeal mutilation creating suffering in the self, so that one can spiritually move towards a knowable new jesus. In this sense, his grace and redemption come through his suffering. He has no eyes, but he sees, and he does not use his ears to listen to others, though he still hears.
Works Cited:
O’Conner, Flannery. Wise Blood. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962. Print.
Wood, Ralph C. Flannery in the Christ Haunted South. Cambridge: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004. Print.
Her choices of metaphors are simplistic explanations providing the backdrop for the emotional and spiritual connection we seek in following Christ. The symbolic comparisons of Mary Magdalene, her relationship to Jesus, mirrors some of Julian of Norwich’s personal spiritual journey of prayerful contemplation while seeking intimacy in her relationship to God.
During the early 1900s, the south was full of religious fervor. Most small communities were based around two or three church families. Cold Sassy Tree, which is a recounting of Will’s memories, contains many references to religion and God. Rucker Blakeslee,...
O'Connor writes of Motes's Christian childhood in chapter one of Wise Blood, in which Hazel associates his cramped berth on the train with memories of entrapment from his youth. Hazel thinks back to "the first coffin he had seen with someone in it," which belongs to his grand father: "His grandfather had been a circuit preacher, a waspish old man who had ridden over three counties with Jesus hidden in his head like a stinger. When it was time to bury him, they shut the top of his box down and he didn't make a move" (O'Connor 9). The grandfather is a powerful influence on Hazel, imprinting Hazel's consciousness with the image of a traveling evangelist who preaches from the nose of an automobile. O'Connor writes that Hazel "knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher" (10); Hazel has not only a profession to pursue but also a prototype to model himself on. Hazel's associations of entrapment with Christianity and automobiles prove meaningful throughout the novel as he embarks upon his own career as a "preacher" and develops a r...
He is very rude and h as no respect nor patience for other’s opinions. Within the first pages, while speaking with nice old Mrs. Hitchcock, Hazel responds in very rude ways, “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”. This already gives an insight to the type of person he will be. After that encounter with Mrs. Hitchcock he demonstrates his overbearing nature when he practically harasses the porter on false pretenses. The porter himself is characterized to be very grotesque with a description saying “a thick figured man with a round yellow bald head” and “when he bent over, the back of his neck came out in three bulges”, this description gives the reader a hideous image of a giant gross fat man. Because Hazel is so overbearing it demonstrates his disregard for anybody’s feelings. He clearly doesn't see that he is upsetting the porter or that he is bothering him which demonstrates the selfish nature in Hazel because all he cares about is the Porter admitting he is from Eastrod even though he
Throughout Hawthorne’s short stories which examine secret sin based in Puritan societies, the protagonist, Mr. Hooper, a preacher in Milford, describes to his wife “Do not desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth” (32). Hooper who has arrived at a point where his community and wife have abandoned him while on his deathbed realizes that he is deserted because of his secret sin. This description of utter loneliness is in contrast with Hawthorne’s portrayal of Hooper, who once was a prominent priest in the Milford area. Hawthorne’s depiction of Mr. Hooper’s secret sin, taking form in the black veil alters his life indefinetely. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories, the author identifies secret sin as the cause of isolation, relationship struggles, and the community’s behavior.
Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood follows Hazel Motes’ attempt to abandon his religious beliefs and establish a “Church Without Christ”. Hazel Motes and many of the characters in Wise Blood seek material prosperity, but utilize religion as a means to reach such a goal. This perversion of Christianity for materialistic objectives prevents the characters’ redemption from Christ. Specifically in the case of Motes, it is not until he has lost everything material that he finally accepts Jesus’ divine grace. The grotesque characters exist to display the distortion of moral purpose that materialism brings. The symbols in Wise Blood focus solely on materialistic desires, this symbolism effectively displays how much the characters rely on materialism in
...that Christ Jesus had redeemed him” (112), and also, as he tells his landlady, Mrs. Flood, “if there’s no bottom in your eyes, they hold more” (222). Mrs. Flood’s residence is where Hazel spends his final days. In an act of possible repentance, Hazel invests in his passionate belief in suffering as he binds himself, puts stones and glass in his shoes, and sleeps with barbed wire around his chest. Wanting to make some quick money, Mrs. Flood plans on asking Hazel to marry her, but ends up developing strong feelings towards him. After informing Hazel of her plans for them to get married, Hazel wanders off for three days until the cops find him on the side of the road barely conscious. Hazel dies while being driven back to Mrs. Flood’s place, where his body is taken back to. It is then that Mrs. Flood decides that Hazel can stay as long as he wants, and for free.
Flannery O’Connor believed in the power of religion to give new purpose to life. She saw the fall of the old world, felt the force and presence of God, and her allegorical fictions often portray characters who discover themselves transforming to the Catholic mind. Though her literature does not preach, she uses subtle, thematic undertones and it is apparent that as her characters struggle through violence and pain, divine grace is thrown at them. In her story “Revelation,” the protagonist, Mrs. Turpin, acts sanctimoniously, but ironically the virtue that gives her eminence is what brings about her downfall. Mrs. Turpin’s veneer of so called good behavior fails to fill the void that would bring her to heaven. Grace hits her with force and their illusions, causing a traumatic collapse exposing the emptiness of her philosophy. As Flannery O’Connor said, “In Good Fiction, certain of the details will tend to accumulate meaning from the action of the story itself, and when this happens they become symbolic in the way they work.” (487). The significance is not in the plot or the actual events, but rather the meaning is between the lines.
The perception of religion is different for everyone and for the grandmother in the story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, being a lady with good Christian values was how she defined herself. The grandmother’s innocence of the evil existing in the world cost her and her family their lives. The story “Cathedral” however, has a more positive outlook on faith. The narrator, “Bub”guided by a blind man named Robert was able to visualize and draw a picture of a cathedral, without really knowing what one was. This essay will examine how the outcomes of both stories were affected by the beliefs of those involved.
It is no secret that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” is a parable. Hawthorne intended it as such and even gave the story the subtitle “a parable.” “The Minister’s Black Veil,” however, was not Hawthorne’s only parable. Hawthorne often used symbols and figurative language to give added meaning to the literal interpretations of his work. His Puritan ancestry also influenced much of Hawthorne’s work. Instead of agreeing with Puritanism however, Hawthorne would criticize it through the symbols and themes in his stories and parables. Several of these symbols and themes reoccur in Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “Young Goodman Brown”, and The Scarlet Letter.
Faith plays a major role in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown”. From the start of his journey to his arrival back home, Faith is always in the back of head, making him question his surroundings and own thoughts. It’s hard to determine when he’s speaking of his lovely wife Faith or his Faith in his God and religion. Through his many
Zuckerman, Michael “Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount”, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 1977), pp. 255-277. The New England Quarterly, Inc.
Determining whether the God you praise and worship is choleric because of your presence by the sins you’ve created is at never ending battle in the 17th-18th centuries. Upon the Burning of Our House is a poem, with nine stanzas, written by Anne Bradstreet explaining her understanding and ability to live and learn from sin to God. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a work, written as a sermon by Jonathan Edwards, who preaches to all the non-Puritan sinners. His belief is that if they don’t convert and take blame for their sins, God’s anger toward them will be unbearable and force them to the pits of hell. Analyzing Bradstreet’s and Edwards’ works, a reader can distinguish the personality of the two writers and the different views of God
Walker’s publication of her latest novel, The Temple of My Familiar, has raised the criticism bar. They complain that Alice Walker has adopted a mushy new age philosophy to confront historical Christianity that has misled and misplaced black women. (Hall 8)
Young Goodman Brown goes into the forest at first with only a small expectation of what he is going to experience. Of his fellow Puritan society he sees the bad seeds as well as supposed men and women of the utmost regard. He sees virgin girls filled with reverence and innocence, and even members of the church present at the devil’s ceremony. This causes Young Goodman Brown to question his entire upbringing and trust in his society. It creates...