背离与回归：《智血》中的基督教思想探析

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摘 要

弗兰纳里·奥康纳（1925-1964）是二十世纪美国杰出的南方女作家，美国文学的重要代言人之一。在她的作品中，大多数保留了独特的地域特色和宗教意蕴，具有浓郁的哥特风格和黑色幽默色彩。奥康纳善于通过作品，剖析人的内在本质，批判社会中存在的问题，对人性进行深入的探索。《智血》是奥康纳的第一部长篇小说，颇能代表她的写作风格。小说主要讲述了经历了主人公对宗教的探索，对基督教从最初的背离到回归的心路历程。在情节发展和人物塑造上，奥康纳结合了二十世纪美国社会的一些现实问题，体现了她对于社会和宗教的思考。

本文通过对《智血》的文本细读与分析，从宗教角度，对小说中的人物形象与环境进行具体讨论，归纳分析对于基督教从背离到回归的过程，并探讨小说背后反映的历史和社会问题对宗教信仰的影响，分析奥康纳对于信仰危机的思考，以及她鼓励人们从基督教信仰中找回精神寄托的深层原因。

在《智血》中，出生于牧师家庭的主人公黑泽尔受到战争的影响，不再笃信上帝的存在与原本的基督教信仰，而他生活的社会由于消费文化的影响，人性堕落、伦理混乱，充分展现了信仰缺失下，人们荒诞无序的生活。在这种环境中，黑兹尔开始了他的反抗信仰的道路。而在黑兹尔追寻的过程中，他也逐渐意识到自己选择的道路并不能带给他平静与真理，终于认识到基督教信仰的重要性，于是开始为自己背离信仰的行为赎罪，逐渐回归基督教信仰。小说反映了二战结束后，战争与不断膨胀的消费文化对宗教信仰带来的负面影响。奥康纳通过以暴力为特色的写作手法，来警示人们，呼吁人们回归基督教信仰，走出精神荒漠。

关键词：弗兰纳里·奥康纳；《智血》；探寻；基督教信仰

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….i

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..ii

摘要…………………………………………………………………………………...iii

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1

Chapter One Deviation from Christianity in Wise Blood……………………………3

1.1 The Lost Belief in God in Wise Blood……………………………………..…3

1.2 The Violation of Christian Ethics in Wise Blood……………………………..5

Chapter Two Resumption of Christianity in Wise Blood…………………………….8

2.1 Hazel’s Quest and Enlightenment……………………...…………………….8

2.2 Hazel’s Penance and Death…………………………………………………10

Chapter Three O’Connor’s Reflection on Spiritual Desolation from Wise Blood…13

3.1 Violence—the Way of Awakening the World…………………………….…13

3.2 Christian Belief—the Way of Leaving the Spiritual Desert………….……..15

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………17

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………..………19

Introduction

Flannery O’Connor was one of the most famous American writers in the twentieth century. She was born on March 25, 1925 in a Catholic family. In the summer of 1951 she was diagnosed with lupus. But her enthusiasm for literature was not reduced by the hardships of life. She died when she was only thirty-nine years old but was long remember by her thirty-two short stories, two novels, and a large number of essays and reviews. Most of her works featured unique regional characteristics and religious meaning. Gothic style and black humor were everywhere in her books. She was extremely good at analyzing human nature and probing into the problems in the society through her works.

Wise Blood, which was published in 1952, was the first novel of O’Connor and was typical of her writing style. In the novel O’Connor depicted a distorted after-war society in which consumer culture and money-worship were prevalent but Christianity and morality were almost absent. The protagonist, Hazel, was a returning World War II veteran. He decided to quest the truth of life by rebelling his Christian belief and starting a new church. But in the end he found that his spiritual home lay in Christianity.

The previous researches abroad on Wise Blood center mainly on psychoanalysis and sarcasm, such as ‘It is not Natural’: Freud’s ‘Uncanny’ and O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1996) of Jeffery Gray, and Comic Polarities in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1984) of Sura Prasad Rath. Also, some analyzes the novel from the perspective of consumer culture, such as A Fondness for Supermarkets: Wise Blood and Consumer Culture (2007) of Jon Lance Bacon. Related researches at home mostly focus on psychological field. For example, in A Lacanian Reading of Hazel’s Psychological Process in Wise Blood (2009), Sun analyzes Hazel’s different states according to Lacanian theory. What’s more, some researches emphasize the violence content in the novel, such as Dai’s Violence in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (2013). However, research on the deviation from Christianity and the resumption of it in the novel is relatively rare. The spiritual evolution of characters in this process and the social elements behind it needs further discussion.

Chapter One

Deviation from Christianity in Wise Blood

1.1 The Lost Belief in God in Wise Blood

Hazel Motes, the protagonist of Wise Blood, was born in a religious family in Eastrod. His grandfather was a pious preacher, who had such a deep influence on Hazel that the boy believed he would become a preacher like his grandfather when he was only twelve years old.

However, as he grew up, the will of being a preacher was weakened by reality. The doubt against Jesus slipped into his mind and gradually took the place of the unconditional acceptance of Christianity. He found there was no punishment when he did something wrong, and neither did anything happen after his atonement. The further collapse of his religious belief came in the war. When he joined the army, the only things he took with him were a Bible and a pair of spectacles once belonged to his mother. He didn’t read the Bible often but “when he did he wore his mother’s glasses”(17; ch. 1). Because “they tired his eyes so that after a short time he was always obliged to stop”(17; ch. 1). And with his mother’s glasses on he criticized his friends in the camp who were going to brothel. The glasses and Bible represented Christian religion. Deep in his heart Hazel had little interest in it. For him, obeying the requirements of creed was nothing but a mere formality remained as a kind of inertia of his childhood ignorance. His loyalty towards Christianity came from not the true demand of his heart but the strong opinion he held since he was a child that he should have that firm religious belief. He did not have a close reflection on his belief until he was wounded and sent off the battle ground. He felt the shrapnel in his chest “still in there, rusted, and poisoning him”(18; ch. 1). For the first time he studied his soul and “assured himself that it was not there”(18; ch. 1). He began to doubt about God and his Christian belief.

In Wise Blood the war was the turning point of Hazel’s belief, which corresponds to the real world. The Second World War did not end until 1945. It had a massive influence on every aspect of American society, including literature. The era between the late 1940s to the late 1960s witnessed the flourish of the postwar literature. Some of the works during this period are less about war than American society, such as Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, Shaw’s The Young Lions and Jone’s From Here to Eternity. They offer readers “historical insight into the real experience of the common people including American soldiers” (Ding 2).

Although the war ended with the triumph of the Allies and the prosperity of America, the trauma it caused would not disappear. The war cast a shadow, especially on those who had been to the battle field. “The myth of the origin of the American nation is usually connected to optimism, individualism, exceptionalism and idea of ‘the city on the hill’”(Ding 3). However, the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden came under strong criticism for attacking undefended cities and targeting innocent civilians. Military actions like these undermined the image of America as a “liberator” which had long been propagandized by the government, and led to disappointment in the authority. The massive killing in the war had a deep impact on people in this religious country. Christians are motivated by love and justice. “Although the New Testament says little about war, those who oppose participation in any war find strong support in Jesus’ teaching in love”(Crook 235), such as “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”(Bible, Mk. 12.31), and his exhortation to “love your enemies”(Bible, Mt. 5.44). Robert McAfee Brown said “We need the brashness to affirm that whatever we know, or do not know, about God’s will, we know at least that it is not God’s will that, having created this earth, God is now urging earth’s children to destroy it and one another”(64). The sharp contradiction between Christian belief and brutal reality led to doubts about religion. Christian belief had been a mental power, but under the circumstances it could deliver little instruction over morality and behavior.

Wise Blood was written in this period. It portrays a world in which God was absent, both in people’s mind and the outside environment. For example, the porter on the train said “Jesus been a long time gone”(21; ch. 1), and Hazel claimed that “Jesus was a liar”(101; ch. 6). Without the guidance of belief, people did whatever they wanted to do and showed little virtue. War was one of the main causes of this distorted world. O’Connor did not give a close description of the war, but she put it as the beginning and the background of the whole story. Hazel once refused to go to brothel out of his former Christian belief. But after coming back from the army, the first thing he did was to find a prostitute. The shrapnel in his chest was the embodiment of war which changed him, made him first reflect on his belief and then discarded it. The disappointment in religion and lost belief in God made Taulkinham a flashy but ugly city, and pushed Hazel to set off for a different belief.

1.2 The Violation of Christian Ethics in Wise Blood

Hawks was a preacher. When he was young he “had promised to blind himself to justify his belief that Christ Jesus had redeemed him”(108; ch. 6). But when the time came and he stood on the stage before audience, he lost his courage and ran away. Hawks not only lost face as a preacher, but also lost faith in his belief. Since then he gave himself up and made a living by pretending to be a blind preacher. Though he had an illegitimate daughter named Sabbath, he did not have a normal family life. Hazel intended to seduce Sabbath in order to challenge Hawks, yet it turned out that he made an unnecessary move, because the Hawks were also scheming to seduce him so the daughter would start a new life with Hazel, and the father could get rid of the daughter. The relationship between Hawks and his daughter was more of employer and employee than father and daughter. Sabbath took care of her father while dreamed of leaving him and leading a better life. At the same time Hawks regarded Sabbath an indelible stain of his life as a preacher and looked forward to getting rid of her as soon as possible. They were like two strangers living together reluctantly, connected loosely by an extremely weak family tie.

Enoch was an 18-year-old boy who had been abandoned by his father and traded to a welfare woman who “didn’t do nothing but pray”(42; ch. 3). Later he was sent to Rodemill Boy’s Bible Academy where he ran away and went back to his father. But the father regarded Enoch as a burden, a barrier of his life with a woman, who, obviously, was not Enoch’s mother. Hence the boy was forced to leave and go to Taulkinham. Enoch’s broken family had a profound affect on him. Though he once lived in a religious environment, Christian belief never took root in his heart. Because the memory of his irresponsible father left a shadow which occupied his mind and there was no spare room for religion. He had stolen a leather pouch from his father and “treasured it because it was the only thing he owned now that his daddy had touched”(136; ch. 8). On one hand he hated his father for what he did and cursed him all the time. On the other hand he was desirous of love and attention, especially from his father. “He looks like a friendly hound dog hunting for friendship in this sordid city but failed to do so”(Tang 13). Though everything about Enoch’s father was presented through the boy’s recall, and he never really showed up in the novel, his indifference was the primary cause of Enoch’s longing for love. Family was essential for one’s development. However, a broken family filled with apathy and estrangement left Enoch nothing except sensitivity and loneliness.

According to Christian ethics, marriage, as the foundation of a family, is of vital importance in a society. It functions in two basic ways. First “it provides a setting for the full-personal development of each partner in self-giving and affords a deep sense of security and acceptance” (Crook 126). Second “it provides a supportive structure for the birth and nurture of children” (Crook 126). However, there was almost no complete family in the story of Wise Blood, let alone a successful marriage. Family members either harbored invisible hatred towards each other, such as Hawks and Sabbath, or left family and lived alone in a city far away from their hometown, like Hazel and Enoch. The family structure, which should have been both spiritually and materially supportive, was so precarious that relatives would leave each other without a second thought as long as there was personal benefit. In this novel, there was no love between family members. The distorted family mode made everyone a lonely soul hanging around aimlessly, or scouring the city for profits only.

Beside the distorted relationship between family members, Wise Blood also presented a flashy world eroded by endless material desires, which was a miniature of American society under consumer culture. After the Second World War, American economy, which received little impact of the war, began to recover and develop due to a series of actions taken by the authority. Being engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the material prosperity of America was supposed to distinguish American capitalism from Soviet communism. But O’Connor, whose literary career coincided with the greatest expansion period of American consumer culture, saw the downside of the rapid economic growth. In Wise Blood, a large proportion of description of Taulkinham was about its commercialization. Advertisements of all kinds were ubiquitous, whereas the goods they promoted were of low quality. “Forms of advertising and marketing envelop the self, submerging it in a world of salable objects”(Bacon 32). People were greatly impacted by the environment, or in other words, they became part of the environment. The only thing that could connect them was profit. Indifference and selfishness were everywhere. Even religion was utilized as a way to realize the increase of wealth. “In the world of the novel, faith itself becomes a commodity”(Bacon 39). The environment could explain why family relationship was damaged, and Christian ethics was constantly violated. Material prosperity ignited material desires. And if not carefully controlled, they would finally burn down not only religion of a nation, but also basic conscience as a human being.

Chapter Two

Resumption of Christianity in Wise Blood

2.1 Hazel’s Quest and Enlightenment

Coming back from the battle field, Hazel’s view of Christianity had been transformed. And the distorted commercialized society added his disappointment in his old belief. He began to fight against Christian moralities and even preached for his new religion “the Church without Christ”, which was in sharp contrast with his obedience when he was a child.

At Hazel’s second night in Taulkinham, he met the fake blind preacher Hawks and his daughter. Hawks told Hazel that he couldn’t run away from Jesus. Hazel, who no longer believed in Christianity, was roused to anger. He argued that “nothing matters but that Jesus don’t exist”(50; ch. 3), and claimed that he would preach a new church of truth without Jesus. The second day Hazel bought a car—a shabby, old Essex, with which he went to preach for his “Church without Christ“. In his church, “there was no sin, no redemption so that people do not need to rely on Christ at all”(Guo 29). He believed that “there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from and no Redemption because there was no Fall and no Judgment because there wasn’t the first two. Nothing matters but Jesus was a liar”(101; ch. 6). Essex marked the beginning of his rebellion, and was the embodiment of his Protestantism. The car not only was a shelter for Hazel, but also could “get him anywhere he wanted to go”(124; ch. 7). His new belief had similar function. It was a harbor where he could hide his mental disturbance aroused by the rapidly changing society in a commercialized world; at the same time it was a carrier which could pull him out of the contradiction between his original Christian belief and the new values prevalent in the consumer culture.

However, Hazel’s car, as well as his “Church without Christ”, was not sturdy enough to stand the test of reality. He sent the car for repairing twice, by which the author indicated his uncertainty about his Protestantism. The first time he went to the garage was when he heard that Hawks blinded himself to justify his belief. Without knowing the second part of the story, in which Hawks actually did not make it at last, Hazel was shocked by his piety. “He took his hat off and put it on again and got up and stood looking around the room as if he were trying to remember where the door was”(108; ch. 6). Trying to defend his new belief, he murmured “nobody with a good car needs to be justified”(109; ch. 6). But subconsciously he realized the power of Christianity because people were willing to sacrifice themselves for their belief. It paved the way for his enlightenment and conversion. Hazel’s second time sending the car to the garage was when he discussed with Sabbath about the issue of illegitimate child. Sabbath told him that in Christian belief “a bastard shall not enter the kingdom of heaven”(116; ch. 7). On one hand Hazel comforted her that “there’s no such thing as a bastard in the ‘Church without Christ’”, and claimed that in his church everyone was equal. On the other hand “something in his mind was already contradicting him and saying that a bastard couldn’t, and that her case was hopeless” (120; ch. 7). Deep in his heart the old belief of Christianity was still there, influencing his mind and conduct without his detection.

Hazel’s final enlightenment came when he knocked down Solace Layfield and killed him with his car just because Layfield imitated his preaching for making money. From clothing to appearance, Layfield resembled Hazel. Hazel blamed him for “saying he doesn’t believe in what he does believe in” (205; ch. 13). As a matter of fact, for Hazel it was not so much to punish an imitator as to deny himself, because his new belief was so weak whereas the Christianity had never been wiped out from his mind. He was not sure about his church himself. When Essex was pushed down from embankment by the patrolman, Hazel was finally enlightened. His determination to begin a new church disappeared together with his car. When the pursuit of Protestantism went so uncontrolled that it became a tool of murder, he finally realized his absurdity and sin.

Hazel’s revolt against his original belief was in fact a quest for the significance of religion, the pursuit of truth and meaning of life. In the transitional period of society, contradictions and conflicts were everywhere. Different from those who indulged themselves in material enjoyments, deep in Hazel’s heart there were also full of contradictions just like the environment around him. He felt at loss after the war and was disappointed with the hypocritical commercial world. His original belief system was distorted. Therefore he decided to find a way out by fighting fiercely against the old opinion and overthrowing the old religion. But at the same time he was not sure about his new belief himself and did not know where it was leading him to. Most importantly, he could not control it. He went so far along the wrong way that he violated the basic morality and ethics. The new church did not bring him peace and the truth of life. “The term conversion refers to a process of ‘turning around’ or changing direction in life. Specifically, it refers to a change of worldview”(Roberts 98). Hazel’s attempt failed but after that his worldview was clearer. His conversion and reflection led him back to Christianity.

2.2 Hazel’s Penance and Death

Having gone through spiritual sufferings and being disillusioned with his dream of starting a new church, Hazel blinded himself with lime, which echoed Hawks’ “blindness”. But apparently there were differences between them. Hawks was too terrified that he fled at least and pretended to be blind in order to earn money, whereas Hazel blind himself for atonement. After that his penance did not stop. He put gravel and broken glass into his shoes and walked in them everyday, and wrapped barbed wires around his chest before he went to sleep. When he was a child, he punished himself in the same way after he blasphemed his belief. That was the beginning of his uncertainty about Christianity because he did not receive any respond from God. As a result he doubted the existence of Jesus. It seems that Hazel got back where he started, but actually he was totally different from the person he had been after a long way of rebelling his original belief and pursuing the so called truth of his new church. After all those struggles he found his spiritual home lies in Christianity. When Mrs. Flood, the landlady, asked Hazel why he tortured himself, he answered because he was “not clean”(228; ch.14), and he was paying for what he had done. This time his penance came naturally from his understanding of his belief.

Mrs. Flood was the only person who lived with Hazel in the last few days of his life. She observed Hazel’s change and presented it to readers, and she was also influenced by Hazel. As the representative of those insensible people in the commercial society, Mrs. Flood was at first portrayed as a greedy materialist who always wanted to gain money from Hazel, and his blinding himself was totally impenetrable to her. But as time went by she found her curiosity about Hazel developed into fascination. She was eager to study him and attempted to understand what he was thinking. Meanwhile, Hazel’s health condition went downhill after his conversion. And his death came in the last chapter of Wise Blood. But his death might have less to do with his health condition than to his lost will of living. His quest for life and religion was fulfilled. Therefore apart from paying for what he had down, life was no longer significant for him.

Mrs. Flood wanted to marry Hazel, because “if she was going to be blind when she was dead, who better to guide her than a blind man?”(233; ch. 14) Though her dream of marriage did not come true, Hazel indeed guided her in the form of his death. When she looked at Hazel’s corpse, she felt “the deep burnt eye sockets seemed to lead into the dark tunnel where he had disappeared” (235; ch. 14). “She shut her eyes and saw the pin point of light but so far away that she could not hold it steady in her mind, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn’t begin, and she saw him moving farther and farther away, farther and farther into the darkness until he was the pin point of light” (235; ch. 14).

“Light” always has some religious significance. In Bible it is related to Jesus and refers to life and rebirth. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men” (Bible, Jn. 1.4). “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world”(Bible, Jn. 1.9). And Jesus said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Bible, Jn. 8.12). The light signified the guidance of Christ. Mrs. Flood saw “the pin point of light” implied that with the influence if Hazel’s conversion and piety, she felt the grace and call of Jesus for the first time. As for Hazel, the “light” meant the death of his body and the rebirth of his spirit. “If Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness”(Bible, Ro. 8.10). Although the novel ended with the death of the protagonist, O’Connor regarded it a novel with hope. Her focus was not on the death but on the disappearance of physical body, together with the sin, and the achievement of spiritual eternity. What’s more, the author depicted Hazel’s death as a kind of enlightenment for the disbelieving and painful modern people. For example, Mrs. Flood progressively gave away her selfish common sense to kindness and charity, something closer to Christianity (Brinkmeyer 87). Her witnessing of Hazel “signals her spiritual evolution” (Brinkmeyer 88). Therefore, Hazel’s death was in effect the resumption of Christianity, both for him and people living in the distorted world.

Chapter Three

O’Connor’s Reflection on Spiritual Desolation from Wise Blood

3.1 Violence—the Way of Awakening the World

In Wise Blood, violence and grotesqueness are almost everywhere. Most of the characters are portrayed ugly and deformed. Enoch was “a damp-haired pimpled boy”(34; ch. 3). “He had yellow hair and a fox-shaped face”(34; ch. 3); Hawks “was a tall cadaverous man” who looked liked “a grinning mandrill”(35; ch. 3). When Hazel got angry with Enoch, he hit the boy directly with a rock. Even the films in the novel were full of violent and horrible factors such as mad medical operations and life at “Devil’s Island Penitentiary”.

Violence is a very important and controversial component in Wise Blood. Some people criticized O’Connor for twisting religious creed and attracting readers by violent scenes. But in fact, it was her approach to wake up people who were lost in a spiritual desolation. In the novel, Hazel’s change was based on fierce destruction. His conversion happened after he committed murder and the patrolman pushed his car down the embankment. The car was the embodiment of Hazel’s sin. He was enlightened when it was destroyed with violence. Hazel used to vent his spleen against everything he hated, but this time he did not get angry with the patrolman. “He stood for a few minutes. His face seemed to reflect the entire distance that extended from his eyes to the blank gray sky that went on, depth after depth, into space”(211; ch. 14). The prolonged silence, foiled by violence, was more significant than anything else. It was that time when Hazel realized that deviation from God could only bring him sin, and lead him to nihility. In Wise Blood the violence not only presented the dark side of society, but also functioned as a tocsin for protagonist.

O’Connor’s grotesque writing style and violent content were related to her health condition. As the only child in the family, she had a childhood filled with love and happiness. Later she moved to Milledgeville, Georgia in 1940 with her family and lived on a farm, where her father died because of systemic lupus erythematosus. That was the first time O’Connor faced with death, and the last days of her care-free part of life. The rest of her life, just like what she said, “has been an anticlimax”(Magee 38). In 1951, exactly ten years after the death of her father, she was diagnosed with lupus, the same disease as him. It gradually exhausted her energies and imposed her with an extremely careful and restricted life. The normal life and joy were luxuries for her.

While her body was suffering from disease, her mind was still standing tall and upright. She completed more than two dozen short stories and two novels while battling lupus. But inevitably her works revealed trails of influence of her own life experience. No matter how strong her mind was, “in the recesses of her soul, there filled with hate and resentment that are unable to be abreacted”(Dai 18). In her monotonous life, the agony brought by lupus needed a vent, which was writing. And the strong feelings such as helplessness and despair of O‘Connor decided that “she hoped to express herself through violence and grotesque” (Dai 18).

More importantly, misery tinted her soul with a hint of pessimism, made her a sober writer who observed the society through the superficial prosperity. She realized that people were hypnotized by material substance, and Christian belief and ethics were corrupting. Therefore Hazel, the grotesque and painful character in a commercialized society, was born. Wise Blood, together with O’Connor’s many other works filled with violence, was not only an outlet of her agony, but also her efforts to wake up those lost in the land without belief and morality, just like she woke up Hazel with violence and destruction in the novel.

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures”(O’Connor, “Mystery and Manners” 34). She believed shocking settings and horrible atmosphere were more likely to impress the story and its thoughts on readers. Writing about violence was never the ultimate goal of O’Connor; instead it was her approach to share with others her concerns, and it was an alarm signal of the spiritual desert people were living in.

3.2 Christian Belief—the Way of Leaving the Spiritual Desert

In Wise Blood O’Connor portrayed a spiritual desert in which God was absent and ethics were distorted. People veered towards materialism and religion was gradually losing its influence. “The world in Wise Blood, without its spiritual dimension, was merely a prison for an odd collection of inmates—a zoo for the human animal”(Allen 257). In order to pursue the truth of life, Hazel rebelled Christian belief but failed to gain spiritual peace and he became “a beast at bay”(Tang 38). But after he resumed his original belief, “his face was stern and tranquil”(235; ch. 14). And he finally achieved spiritual eternity. It was Hazel’s resumption of Christian belief that finally freed him from sin and evil, and brought him redemption.

The change of Hazel in Wise Blood—from deviating from Christianity to resuming his belief—revealed O’Connor’s view of Christian religion. Although she lived in an age when belief crisis was everywhere from society to the field of literature, she still kept enthusiasm towards her religion. For O’Connor, the development of the American society after the Second World War was morbid. When everyone was celebrating the prosperity of the country, she saw the spiritual desert behind it. For her the Christian belief was the most effective approach of leaving the spiritual desert in a material-worship culture.

O’Connor grew up in a Catholic community. She witnessed the development of monopoly capitalism of American society. The substance prosperity exacerbated the sense of alienation and the belief crisis after the Second World War. Money occupied almost everything in people’s life, which directly led to the recession of morality. People were lost in material life, and were apathetic and hypocritical to each other. “She had as little patience for her country’s deifications of capital and consumption as for its essentially secular commodifications of Christianity”(Pinkerton 449). In Wise Blood she depicted people’s “adherence to the most shallow and unthinking Christianity, their worship of a commodity culture, and their general conformity to a spiritually empty, materially overfull nationalist ethos” (Pinkerton 451). She targeted the idea that “Christianity could be dispensed with” in her criticism of modern American culture.

Wise Blood was about impoverished people who were afflicted in both mind and body. Most of them had little or distorted sense of spiritual purpose. O’Connor saw by the light of her Christian faith and wrote about the perverse, the grotesque of the society and the religious conversion of the protagonists. Through the novel she tried to instill the significance of Christianity in the readers, because as far as she was concerned, “the meaning of life was center in the Redemption by Christ” (O’Connor, “Mystery and Manners” 32).

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