American South and the Protagonists in Flannery O’Connor’s Novel Wise Blood

Wise Blood, written by Flannery O’Connor, is one of the most interesting stories in American fiction of the 20th century. It is a story which takes place in the middle of the 20th century, and which portrays the life and the society as such of the so called American South of that time. It is a powerful story which on the basis of a simple plot attempts to present a very important idea, the idea of human segregation on one hand, but, on the other hand, Flannery O’Connor very masterly dared to hide the main theme of the novel. It is a theme that tells us about spiritual and physical dimensions of human beings. The aim of this paper is to analyze typical elements of “Southerness,” the characters, either positive or negative, and to find what effect they have on the overall message of the novel.The author, Flannery O’Connor, was generally known as a very vivid supporter of the movement which fought for the rights of the Negro people. She was interested in the ideas presented by Martin Luther King Jr., which is mirrored in most of her works. This influence and a deep-rooted belief in human equality resulted in a typical way of depiction of the society as well as of the characters of her novel. The fact that she herself was a Catholic and a southern writer, too, reflected in the novel very vividly.

She was fully aware of what she was writing about. Her deep-rooted belief in the Church and typical features of Southern identity resulted in a typical way of the vision of the world. In his work The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South, Collum polemizes about the image of the Southern society. He attempts to find an answer to a question what was the source of O’Connor’s style of writing. He mentions O’Connor’s own words which say that “the two circumstances that have given character to my own writing have been those of being Southern and being Catholic” (O’Connor In: Collum ¶ 2). Therefore, to a certain limit we can agree that being a Catholic writer in a protestant environment, which is one of the main features of Southern mentality, was really difficult. But, on the other hand, a typical Southern identity, according to O’Connor, “results from beliefs and qualities absorbed from the scriptures and from her own history of defeat and violation: a distrust of the abstract, a sense of human dependence on the grace of God, and on a knowledge that evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured.” (O’Connor In: Collum ¶ 3) The fact that “the South is still markedly more religious than the rest of the country” (Collum ¶ 4) is one of the most important features of Southern culture and society.

But another very important fact about the Southern religion itself is that: “religion is the saving grace of the South, but Southern religion has a tragedy of its own” (Collum ¶ 7). If we want to be more precise in defining the Southerners, we have to look at the concept of the Southern identity from different points of view, too. It cannot be seen only from a point of view of religion. The American South is typical of many aspects of the life itself. The Southern identity can be seen as extremely varied. The nature of American people living in the Southern regions enabled them to bring inventions and contributions to social life, which are, without any doubts, beyond price. The passion and ferociousness that can be seen in the Southerners is unique and cannot be found anywhere else. Collum writes about the Southerners that “the South is home to a joyous biracial culture given to fried foods, funny stories, and elaborate festivities of all sorts. The South invented Coca-Cola and the music to which the whole world now dances. This culture is nestled, for the most part, in a natural setting of unmatchable beauty, comfort, and fertility.” (Collum ¶ 8)The time ‘Connor portrayed was specific for a negative attitude towards black people. Throughout the whole novel, we may see several examples which indirectly render a vivid image of the overall situation.

And the situation was that black people, or the Negroes, as they are referred to in the novel were constantly deprived of their rights and a general atmosphere was negative for them. The reason for such behaviour may be found in the history of America. America, especially American South, was typical of slavery. The growth of industrialization and the development of the country established a rapid increase in the need of working powers. The American South as primarily oriented at agriculture and plantations needed more and more people to work for rich settlers. There exist two fundamental aspects of the American slavery system. Firstly, a vast majority of slaves were the blacks taken from their homelands, mostly from Africa and other colonies. Secondly, slavery was a typical mark of the American South rather than the North. Beauford supports this fact by claiming that: “by the time we arrive at the Revolutionary Era, 40 percent of blacks in the North were freemen, in contrast to 4 percent in the South” (Beauford 28). One of such indirect examples can be seen in a passage when Hazel Motes, a protagonist, arrives to Taulkinkam, a southern city near Atlanta, and tries to find toilets. At the end of a station he spots a big sign saying: “MEN’S TOILET.

WHITE” (O’Connor 20). On this example, we can see one of the typical features of American South of that time. Although it was not legally accepted, white people still found it difficult to accept their black companions. This idea of segregation is evident throughout the whole novel, which reveals a true image of race and gender relations in the post-war American South. This kind of attitude can be seen to root from the fact that throughout the century black people have become an integral part of Southern American society. Beauford connects this issue to the fact that the Negroes spread over the whole America and “were slowly transformed by the mid-20th century from centuries of rural life, to America’s most urban population” (Beauford 29). But, on the other hand, they are still viewed as something less and unequal.Another proof of this idea can be found in a part devoted to Hazel’s buying car.

Here, we can witness an indirect reference to the fact that black people were usually forced to do hard and very often badly paid work and still their work was considered as not equal one: “Well, what you want to pay for it?” the man asked. “I wouldn’t trade me a Chrysler for a Essex like that. That car yonder ain’t been built by a bunch of niggers.”“All the niggers are living in Detroit now, putting cars together,” he said, making conversation. “I was up there a while myself and I seen. I come home” (O’Connor 42).This fact can be supported by another proof. This time it represents negative feelings towards black people. We can find it in a scene where Hazel has an incident with a policeman. Hazel crossed the street even though he was not allowed to do so. The policeman’s reaction: “Maybe you thought the red ones was for white folks and the green ones for niggers,” (O’Connor 28) serves us as evidence of negative relationships towards black people and attempts to separate them from the others.So far, everything that was said was connected only to one common feature of the southern society.

But anther one, not less important, is the feature of general hostility and unfriendly atmosphere of the city which can be seen in the novel. The southern city is described as an unfriendly place where it is extremely hard to find some friends. It is a place where nobody knows anyone:“You ain’t gonna know none either. This is one more hard place to make friends in. I been here two months and I don’t know nobody. Look like all they want to do is knock you down.” (O’Connor 30).But for Hazel Motes it is not so strange. He himself is a kind of a stranger who is not willing to make new friends with anyone. Hazel’s characteristic stems from his purpose of arrival to this city. His aim was not to make friends but to establish a new type of church, which was the consequence of the fact that the city he found was almost depopulated: “Get away from me, Haze said.”“People ain’t friendly here. You ain’t from here but you ain’t friendly neither.” (O’Connor 36).
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.