At the beginning, Hazel seems to be satisfied with the conditions he encounters there. But Enoch Emery is different. Enoch lacks a close friend throughout the whole novel. He is described as a man who is alone. Therefore, he immediately joins Hazel Motes and wants him to be his friend. In some cases he feels even abandoned. Therefore, he was pleased with a situation when he meets with an ape and has a chance to shake a hand with it. It is an absolutely new experience for him and seems to like it very much: It was the first hand that had been extended to Enoch since he had come to the city. It was warm and soft (O’Connor 98).At the end of the novel, a reader may get a complete image of the society of that time. The author used one of the characters, namely Mrs. Flood, in order to present her own vision of the southern society. According to the author: “the world is an empty space,” (O’Connor 124). Consequently, at the end of the novel, Mrs. Flood feels sorry for Hazel Motes and proposes that she will marry him just to help and save him: “Get married. I wouldn’t do it under any ordinary condition but I would do it for a blind man and a sick one. If we don’t help each other, Mr. Motes, there’s nobody to help us, “ she said. “Nobody.

The world is an empty space” (O’Connor 124).The character of Mrs. Flood sounds like the author’s prophet whom she uses to present her ideas that there is still something you can rely on; that there is still something that can save you.However, there are far more things that give us an image of southern society. So far, all clues have been found only in the actions or events that happened in the novel. But there are some characters, too, which possess characteristics typical of American society. Such an example can be seen in Mrs. Leora Watts, who as Linda Rohrer Paige says: “embodies low class Southern culture”(Paige 328). She develops her idea further and states that: “Flannery O'Connor has carefully painted ambiguous portraits of the poor Southern refuge, generally referred to as low class or as poor white trash”(Paige 325). But when we try to analyze these protagonists, we will discover that they are usually white folk people who possess various powers on one hand, but on the other hand, they can be very weak too. As George A. Kilcourse Jr. says: “Christian humility is clearly what her protagonists most lack.

What characterizes them in its absence is pride, which O'Connor attributed to inherent sinfulness. Her protagonists undergo powerful spiritual transformations that result from discomfiting experiences effected by the grace of God. In short, God mercifully mortifies them in the hope that they will freely open their hearts to the Holy Spirit, either at the moment of death or as they begin to expiate their pettiness”(Kilcourse 483).Therefore, it seems that the primary struggle that these characters undergo is connected mainly to the fact that they are searching for redemption in whatever way. But Wise Blood is typical of something else. It is the way she depicts the characters of her novel. Flannery O’Connor masterly portrayed a variety of characters. However, there are two that need to be mentioned. Hazel Motes is described as a man that is destined to travel and to find his own place to be. A similar desire can be seen in the life of Enoch Emery.

He himself feels that he needs some change even though he is not aware of what kind it should be: “Something’s going to happen to me today,” Enoch said.“I told you it was okay,” she said. “I fixed it today.” “I seen it this morning when I woke up,” he said, the look of a visionary (O’Connor 76).This feeling that something new will happen may be understood as his inner voice that was calling for some kind of change because he was not satisfied with the live he lived. The fact that he worked at the zoo may be the reason why he in a way envied animals. Every day he met them and witnessed something that he never had. Animals at the zoo were kept in a safe place, they were being watched by many visitors who liked them and, in some cases even gave them candies. He had never had all this. Therefore, it may seem strange but the fact that he took a disguise of Gorilla was in a way satisfaction for him. He felt that this was his destiny and that God had not forgotten him at all. No gorilla in existence, whether in the jungles of Africa or California, or in New York City in the finest apartment in the world, was happier at that moment than this one, whose god had finally rewarded it. (O’Connor 108).

The last, but not less interesting, image that Flannery O’Connor portrays in her novel is the image of evil. All characters and all the actions they perform are more or less connected to the main idea of the novel. As R. Carson claims: “As a profoundly Catholic and moral writer, O'Connor portrayed the evil in everyday life. Its mark of Cain in her work is deformity, usually of the body, always of the soul” (Carson 186). O’Connor’s vision of evil is seen mainly through sexual affairs. It has been already said that Flannery O’Connor was a Catholic writer living in a Southern culture, which was to a certain degree interwoven with the Southern Protestantism, whose theology, according to Collum is: ”one in which the incarnation, where flesh and spirit indisputably mix, is what sex was to the Victorians, an unpleasant necessity not to be discussed in polite company” (Collum ¶ 8). He develops this image further by taking into consideration the whole Southern culture and claims that: “Southern culture labours under the yoke of a religious ideology that insists, against all this abundant evidence, that the things of this world are irredeemably evil” (Collum ¶ 9).

At first, it is Hazel Motes whose attempts to find a companion in a strange city result in visiting a prostitute, Leora Watts. Another example can be seen in the character of Enoch Emery. He is obsessed with a woman who appears at the swimming pool where he works. He used to sit in the bushes and watch that woman. According to Carson: “This passage contains one of the novel's many representations of evil. Peering from the bushes down at the woman, Enoch bears a startling likeness to an incubus. Such demon spirits were believed to desire sexual intercourse with sleeping women”(Carson 186).An example of the same kind reveals in front of us where Hazel Motes decides that he will seduce Lily Hawks. But his decision has got a much stronger counterpart in Lily herself. Carson continues in his argumentation and states that: “Sabbath Lily Hawks is a much greater risk” (Carson 187). What was special about her was that Lily was a nice and a young girl.

She was a perfect instrument of seduction. And, finally, she succeeded in fulfilling her plan and slept with Hazel. Based on these examples of evil we have a clear image of author’s vision of morality.We may only ask why Flannery O’Connor decided for the usage of sexually-oriented scenes in the novel. The truth is that there arise a number of various answers to these questions. However, the fact is that among them there would, without any doubts, exist one which would say that it was mainly the influence of Protestantism, which she was surrounded with, that caused her to use such scenes. America is a country known as very liberal on one hand, but on the other hand very a puritan too. Therefore, it may not seem strange that she used sexual seduction as a primarily human and a totally earthly tool in order to describe a feature typical for the Southerners that: “the things of this world are irredeemably evil” (Collum ¶ 9).

Flannery O’Connor’s works, especially Wise Blood, are specific for many reasons. One of them is her strong side in creating various characters. Typical feature of them is that they are searching for a kind of deliverance and do it under all conditions. Thus it is rather funny that many characters pretend various things just in order to be delivered. Her message or the fundamental theme of the novel, which, according to G. M. Sweeny is: “that the world, without its spiritual dimension, is merely a prison for an odd collection of inmates - a zoo for the human animal“(Sweeney 108), is therefore very important. Based on this, it is reasonable to suggest that Flannery O’Connor in the character of Hazel Motes attempts to convey her principal belief that no one can escape his destiny, which is determined by the will of God. However, sometimes we are not able to see it; and therefore, we need someone to show us real truth about ourselves, similarly as Hazel motes needed to blind himself in order to see deeper into freedom and redemption of his soul.