Page "Wise Blood" Paragraph 12

In the novel, O ' Connor revisits her recurring motif of a disaffected young person returning home and the theme of the struggle of the individual to understand Christianity on a purely individualistic basis.

O ' Connor's hero, Hazel Motes, sneers at communal and social experiences of Christianity, sees the followers of itinerant, Protestant preachers as fools, and sets out to deny Christ as violently as he can.

Against his individual attempts, Motes faces the tendency of all around him to identify him as a preacher.

Enoch Emery, a friend of Motes who is in search of a new Jesus, explains that some people have " wise blood ": that the blood knows even if the mind does not.

Hazel is obsessed with preachers, with salvation, and with denying redemption.

He seeks to save people from salvation, eventually becoming an anti-priest of The Church Without Christ, where " the deaf don't hear, the blind don't see, the lame don't walk, the dumb don't talk, and the dead stay that way ," and, in the end, becoming a hallowed ascetic.