842 O’Connor, Flannery
receives for his services, and the three strands of
barbed wire Hazel uses to mortify his flesh.
Another prominent Christian motif is that of
sight and blindness. The most obvious reference is
Hazel’s last name: Motes. In St. Matthew’s Gospel,
Jesus tells the assembled to beware of false prophets
and promises salvation to those who do the will of
the Father. “First,” says Jesus, “cast the beam out of
thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast
the mote out of thy brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:5).
For much of the novel, Hazel remains willfully
blind. With this futile attempt, he can be seen as
attempting to return to an innocent state. In Gen-
esis, God cautions Adam and Eve about the Tree
of Knowledge of Good and Evil: “From that tree
you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you
are surely doomed to die” (Gen. 2:17). After Adam
and Eve eat of the tree, “the eyes of both of them
were opened.” Knowledge has an effect on them,
and knowledge has an effect on Hazel. He has spent
many years avoiding the knowledge of sin, but it is
only, as with Adam and Eve, true knowledge of sin
that allows Hazel to see that God will not be denied
and that he must cast out the beam in his own eye.
In addition to his self-blinding, the theme of vision
is made explicit at the end of the novel when he dies
with his eyes open.
Despite these ties to Christ, Hazel takes every
opportunity to vigorously deny his existence, yet
even his denials link him to Christ. On the road to
Calgary, St. Peter denies knowledge of Christ. Like
St. Peter, Hazel also claims that Christ does not
exist. “I do not know the man,” says Peter (Matt.
26:72); “Jesus don’t exist,” Hazel declares. The image
of Peter enhances the Christian theme of the novel,
for Peter is the rock on which the Christian Church
is founded. Hazel, too, founds a church.
If the horrifying destructiveness of Hazel’s self-
blinding and his subsequent self-mortification make
us doubt the salvific character of the deeds, his effect
on Mrs. Flood eliminates that doubt. With Hazel,
Mrs. Flood feels that there is something “hidden
near her but out of her reach.” Hazel’s landlady
feels that because of Hazel’s blindness, “she was
being cheated,” and she stares “into his face as if she
expected to see something she hadn’t seen before.”
What she sees in Hazel is the light of Christ, and
at the end of the novel, Mrs. Flood begins her own
journey to salvation: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. . . . She sat staring with
her eyes shut, into eyes, 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.Through his deeds, particularly his self-blinding,
Hazel has become for others the guiding light of
Christ.
Susan AmperSuFFerInG in Wise Blood
Hazel Motes is called to make a leap of faith, to
believe in that which cannot be seen. He goes on
a Christian quest in spite of himself, pulled simul-
taneously by a desire to know spiritual truth and a
fear of knowing. Driven by intertwining motiva-
tions, he seeks a transformative experience but
would prefer one that will prove that Christ does
not exist. His denial of Christ within himself leads
to his brutal suffering at the end of Wise Blood. The
novel begins in a train traveling through the deso-
late vistas of Tennessee, bound for Taulkinham. The
train identifies for the reader that a quest has begun.
At the start of his journey to salvation, Hazel wan-
ders unaware of the spirituality of life, and it is
only through intense suffering and soul-wrenching
moments that he is awakened from his deadened
state. It is through suffering that Hazel Motes
comes to know Christ.
To know Christ is to “suffer for his sake” (Phil.
1:29), but if a man suffers for Christ, he “shall also
reign with” Christ (2 Tim. 2:12). Jesus suffered for
all humankind, and it is his example that Christians
seek to follow. Suffering can lead to a return of faith.
Part of Hazel’s suffering comes from his complete
isolation. While still a child, he experienced the
loss of two brothers and his father, and he lost his
mother when he was 16. At the start of the novel,
Hazel is 22, and he returns from the war to Eastrod,