Analyzing Hazel Motes Wise Blood

Hazel Motes tirelessly focuses on the idea that redemption from Jesus Christ is a poorly constructed illusion; however, O’Connor uses symbolic figures to disprove Hazel Motes’s theory of Christ’s redemption. The title Wise Blood has multiple symbolic meanings, but one of the meanings focuses on the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ. Humanity sees Christ’s sacrifice as an act that “redeemed humans from the effects of Original Sin so that all who repent of serious sins could enter paradise after physical death” (“Flannery O’Connor” 22). However, Hazel does not see Christ’s death as this way. He feels that Christ did not truly die for the sins of people, and he finds the idea of Christ dying for the sins of everyone in the world to be outrageous. He asks several people about why anyone would ever die for someone else’s shortcomings. It seems as though Hazel thinks that he knows everything and tries to prove this to numerous people. Although major

Aaron Hillyer describes the animals as “passive and seemingly reconciled to waiting out their existence in a way that is reminiscent of the well-known passage in the Letter to the Romans 8:19, in which Paul evokes the animals’ yearning expectation from redemption” (128). O’Connor wants to present the idea that numerous people live their lives like the animals in the zoo of the novel. They sit in captivity waiting for something more, but they never look to Christ. O’Connor wants the reader to understand that he or she will receive fulfillment if he or she accepts Christ into his or her life. This is another example of the redemptive symbolism that O’Connor is trying to convey to the reader. After the evaluation of the various forms of symbolism in Wise Blood, one can infer that O’Connor adequately conveys her theme of religion, redemption, and sin using cleverly placed