Wise Blood 841tied to the material world. Mrs. Flood sees life only
in terms of the physical: eating, spending, work-
ing. Hazel’s behavior, his refusal to talk to her, his
walking off when she comes near, can all be read as
condemnations of her self-interested generosity and
good works that are performed only when they are
good business. When she tells Hazel that he has
dropped money into a garbage can, he tells her that
he does not need the money. Such a thought is alien
to Mrs. Flood, for she is immersed in the mate-
rial world. She feels safe in the world of physical
objects, and she has habituated herself to viewing
as much of existence as possible in terms of those
physical objects. Food is one of her favorites. She
notes that Hazel does not eat much and just sits
quietly for most of the day, and she thinks to herself
that if she herself were blind, she would sit by the
radio all day eating ice cream and cake and soak-
ing her feet. Despite her revulsion when she looks
at Hazel’s ravaged face, Mrs. Flood allows him to
keep his room in her house and offers to cook his
meals, all for an increase in his rent, for when she
is not thinking of food, she is thinking of money.
She rationalizes her behavior, thinking that she is
“justified in getting any [of her taxes] back that she
could. She felt justified in getting anything at all
back that she could, money or anything else.” She
notes that Hazel gets a monthly pension from the
government for his war injury, and she is prepared
to marry him to get her hands on this steady stream
of income.
When Mrs. Flood is with Hazel, she feels that
there is something “valuable hidden near her, some-
thing she couldn’t see,” and whatever she looks at, she
wants. Hazel’s landlady feels that in his blindness,
“she was being cheated.” “Why had he destroyed his
eyes,” she wonders, “and saved himself unless he had
some plan.” She does not want to “look at the mess
he made in his eye sockets” because the daily sight
of him forces questions on her that she has refused
to consider before, and though she tries to “keep her
mind going on something else” when he is near her,
she finds “herself leaning forward, staring into his
face as if she expected to see something she hadn’t
seen before.”
The result of this wanton materialism, though, is
death. Mrs. Flood has been so intent on supplying
her own material needs that she seems hardly aware
that Hazel is dying. When Hazel does not return
from his final flight from Mrs. Flood, she calls the
police and asks that he be returned to her so that he
can pay his rent. Before he can be picked up, Hazel
dies. Mrs. Flood, unaware that the body returned to
her house is no longer alive, offers Hazel free room
and board. Even at this point, though, she remains
blind to the truth: She is still trying, even at the very
end, to “see how she had been cheated or what had
cheated her.”
Susan AmperreLIGIon in Wise Blood
Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood is filled with gro-
tesqueries, bleakness, and sinfulness, yet O’Connor
called it a “hopeful book.” The hopefulness comes
in the form of Hazel Motes, who, like St. Paul
on the road to Damascus, is waylaid, blinded, and
reborn. Hazel’s salvific nature, though, does not
become apparent until the end of the novel. At the
start of his journey to salvation, Hazel, like many of
O’Connor’s characters, is moody and misanthropic.
Despite his willful blindness, nihilism, and vio-
lent nature, Hazel can be viewed as a Christ figure.
Numerous life images are attached to him. Green,
the color of new life, is linked specifically to Hazel,
whose twisted spiritual quest begins with him seated
on a plush green train seat; his berth on the same
train is enclosed by green curtains, and the interior
of his car is green. Water, another image of rebirth,
surrounds Hazel as he dies. Leaving Mrs. Flood’s
house for the last time, he walks through an icy rain
and dies lying in a drainage ditch filled with water.
Other references late in the novel also associate
Hazel with spiritual or even eternal life, including
his living without material possessions and caring
little for food or money.
Hazel is further associated with Christ by the
number 3, which recurs frequently in the New Tes-
tament. Christ is tempted three times, rises on the
third day, and is part of the Trinity. Hazel is influ-
enced by three women: Mrs. Watts, Mrs. Flood, and
Sabbath Lilly, representing light, water, and rebirth,
respectively. Other multiples of three include the
three dollars a week Hazel pays Mrs. Watts for
his room, the three dollars a night Solace Layfield