840 O’Connor, Flannery
overcomes her prejudices and reaches out to the
Misfit, who shoots her in return. He has found a
license for violence in his rejection of Christ and
reacts aversely to the grace the grandmother shows
him. Through his life experience, the Misfit has
discovered that punishment for crime is ineffec-
tive and thus does not discourage violence, because
punishment has no lasting consequences and does
not make the individual consider or even remember
what has happened. Crime and punishment are
incongruent, which has caused him to call himself
“The Misfit.” Being accused of having killed his
father and subsequently being “buried alive” in the
penitentiary for something he claims not to have
done, he concludes that there is no real justice.
In the Christian gospel, Grace is defined as
unmerited favor, expressed in God’s forgiveness
toward humanity, and in its reverse, it means that
Jesus received unmerited violent punishment. Vio-
lence in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” must
be seen in relation to the violence of the cross.
O’Connor often alludes to the violence that God
directed at himself so that he could spare humanity.
The Misfit sees violence as a reasonable reaction
to the assumption that God does not exist. For
O’Connor, violence against others is the ultimate
sign of the absence of grace, and yet she portrays
characters who, in all their violence, are redeemable,
and who can be swept away in moments of grace.
Wiebke Omnus
o’CoNNor, FLaNNEry Wise Blood
(1952)
Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, is
the story of a wounded veteran of World War II,
22-year-old Hazel Motes, and his attempts to rec-
oncile his beliefs in a world where there is no sin
and no Jesus, with the “wild ragged figure [of Jesus]
motioning him to turn around and come off into the
dark.” In a 1962 author’s note to the second edition,
O’Connor (1925–64) calls it a “comic novel about a
Christian malgré lui, and as such, very serious, for all
comic novels that are any good must be about mat-
ters of life and death.”
O’Connor began writing the novel in 1947
while studying for her M.F.A. in creative writing at
the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and in
1948 she won the Rinehart-Iowa Fiction Award for
her submission of a portion of this novel. While at
Yaddo, the writer’s colony in Saratoga Springs, New
York, in 1948 and 1949, she continued to work on
Wise Blood, and it was finally published in 1952.
A reader should begin a study of O’Connor’s
work with the understanding that her Catholic
faith is a significant factor in its meaning. In 1954,
in response to a letter from a reader, O’Connor
wrote, “My background and my inclinations are
both Catholic, and I think this is very apparent in
the book.” Not well reviewed when it was first pub-
lished, Wise Blood is today considered one of the best
novels of the 20th century.
Susan AmpercommodIFIcatIon/commercIaLIzatIon
in Wise Blood
Wise Blood acknowledges the pull of consumerism
and commercialism and represents, to some extent, a
comment on American consumer culture. Flannery
O’Connor is adamant about the evils of commer-
cialization and a materialist postwar suburban ethic
that was already manifest in 1947 when she won the
Rinehart-Iowa Fiction Award for a section of Wise
Blood, later her first novel. The deleterious effects of
commercialism are most evident in Hazel’s dealings
with Hoover Shoats and Mrs. Flood.
Hoover Shoats espouses religion to make a
buck. He is a con man who sees Hazel’s effectiveness
and offers to produce his preaching gigs for him.
Shoats sees a way to make money off gullible listen-
ers, but Hazel wants no part of the money-making
scheme, and Shoats replies, “I can get my own new
jesus and I can get Prophets for peanuts.” Shoats
finds a lookalike in Solace Layfield and establishes
the Holy Church of Christ Without Christ on a
firm profit-making basis. Hazel kills his compro-
mising twin, because he “ain’t true,” but also because
he is using Hazel’s concept to make money. For the
murder weapon, Hazel uses his car—his only mate-
rial possession. Materialism and consumerism thus
lead to death.
From this point on, Hazel’s attempts to rid
himself of all things material is complicated by his
landlady, Mrs. Flood, who endeavors to keep him