Don't cut yourself, you dare not lose any

Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s first novel and a “work of strange beauty” was published in 1952, exploring the evangelical Deep South and the activities of the curious character, Hazel Motes. O’Connor’s employed macabre humour and grotesque undertones make an interesting read, in both a modern and post-modern interpretation. The immediate reception of Wise Blood in 1952 was mixed; praise, misunderstanding and outrage. At first, some resented O’Connor’s fiction, receiving it as mockery of the Baptist and Methodist faiths. Wise Blood could be seen as a comical account of the creation of an anchorite and a hallowed ascetic, or on the other hand, an existential novel delivered in a tragi-comedy genre, lightening the heavy load of the moral content.
As an atheist myself, I found the book intriguing and rather progressive for its time, especially for a woman’s voice to bring up such controversial issues, such as her own Roman Catholic faith and to question morality and ethics behind such faiths.
There are a number of poetic threads weaved through the novel such as the repeated notion of ‘wise blood’ and how it speaks to its possessor, the obsession with eyes, the gaze and being able to see beyond one’s solid form and of course, with faith and preaching.

Wise BloodThe recurring notion of blood ‘speaking’ and ‘telling’ its vessel what to think and how to act echoes Enoch Emery, Motes’ friend who is searching for a new Jesus, and his theory of ‘wise blood’, being that the blood knows, even if the mind does not and being able to communicate secrets otherwise unknown. The metaphorical, symbolic and significant presence of ‘wise blood’ in the novel portrays the somewhat disillusioned credence in the body, extended to Christ’s and its ability to surpass what is possible, given realistic provisions:
“Naturally, his blood was not going to put up with any attitude like this.” (p92)

EyesAs professed in James Mellard’s essay Framed in the Gaze: Haze, Wise Blood and Lacanian Reading, Wise Blood can be read through a Lacanian lens by applying Jacques Lacan’s philosophy and psycho-analysis, “for virtually every important element in the novel pivots on concepts…in Lacan’s notion of the gaze” (Mellard p52)
Hazel's preoccupation with others is a textual reminder of Lacan’s Symbolic, and what he considers the ‘function of the gaze’ and the ability to see beyond the physical being, to the soul, the eyes, akin to blood, taking on an ultra-human quality, “It’s you that can’t see, Mr Motes.” (p154)

Faith Hazel becomes 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," Hazel, therefore, is a believer without belief and a seer without vision. I found Hazels anti-religious sentiment refreshing, amongst the other character’s preaching and soap-box activism, uncovering the truth behind the church’s greediness and shameless profiteering behaviour; “’Listen!’ Haze shouted. ‘It don’t cost you any money to know the truth! You can’t know it for money!’” (p105) By the novel's denouement though, Hazel's church becomes his own body, after his car is destroyed, his physical being taking on a spiritual and religious load. After believing that he can be saved from being evil by believing in nothing,  he is a Christian in spite of himself and his 'redemption' is blinding himself (successfully accomplishing Asa Hawks' failed act), wearing barbed wire across his chest and stones in his shoes.

O'Connor has created a work that divulges the psychological and spiritual guilt and 'enlightenment' through faith, and the radical Calvinism of the South.