The Essex and Hazel Motes in Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

The Essex and Hazel Motes in Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

In her 1952 novel Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor presents Hazel Motes's Essex automobile as a symbol for Hazel himself. The car's dilapidated state corresponds to Motes's own spiritual decay; however, the initial quality of the car's workmanship corresponds to Hazel's Christian upbringing, which he cannot deny in spite of himself. Motes's identification with and reliance upon his car as a means of escape becomes ironic as the Essex continually fails to deliver him from his demons; Hazel's dependence on his car (despite his contentions that he is not concerned with material possessions) actually holds him back.

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...

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...d, the Essex, with its roles as home, pulpit, coffin, and metaphor for Hazel Motes himself, is the "driving" force of Wise Blood.

Works Cited

Allen, William Rodney. "The Cage of Matter: The World as Zoo in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood." American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 58:2 (1986): 256-270.

O'Connor, Flannery. Three by Flannery O'Connor. New York: Signet, 1983.

Paige, Linda Rohrer. "White Trash, Low Class, and No Class at All: Perverse Portraits of Power in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood." Papers on Language and Literature 33:3 (1993). 325-333.

Ragen, Brian Abel. A Wreck on the Road to Damascus: Innocence, Guilt, and Conversion in Flannery O'Connor. Chicago: Loyola UP, 1989.

Tate, J.O. "The Essential Essex." The Flannery O'Connor Bulletin 12 (1983): 47-59.