Wise Blood Flashcards
1
Q
Enoch Emery:
A
- Hazes wannabe friend and helper.
- Enoch is an unintelligent and irritating, extremely isolated and lonely 18-year-old boy. He tries desperately to connect with other people, but they all invariably ignore or reject him and often treat him cruelly.
- He trusts his spiritual instincts—his wise blood—implicitly.
- Enoch always acts on what his wise blood tells him to do as if he has no control over it and cannot act otherwise.
- Enoch, who works at the zoo, also has a conflicting, powerful base instinct that makes him feel the need to compete with animals.
- He mistreats animals to elevate himself above them.
- He is a voyeur and a thief, but at heart he is a kind of simple innocent, albeit one who commits murder out of his desperate need for human connection.
- He tries to befriend and help Hazel Motes, but Hazel, too, treats him with indifference and contempt.
1
Q
Hazel “Haze” Motes:
A
- The preacher “Church without Jesus.
- Hazel Motes comes from a religious family, whose members are now dead.
- He’s alone but wholly absorbed in his mission to teach that there are no such things as Jesus or redemption.
- However, the intensity of his rejection of Jesus serves only to show just how desperate Hazel is to be redeemed through a relationship with Jesus.
- Other characters can see that Jesus is operating within Hazel and that his destiny is to be a Christian preacher.
- After moving to Taulkinham, Tennessee, Hazel starts the “Church Without Christ” to broadcast his truth—that there is no truth—to the public.
- But after Hazel’s message is perverted by Hoover Shoats and his car is destroyed, Hazel blinds himself as a form of penance and a means of redeeming his soul.
2
Q
Asa Hawks:
A
- Corrupt preacher, feigns blindness to beg for money.
- A fraud who tried but could not find the courage to blind himself to inspire the faithful to give him more money.
- Wears dark glasses to pretend he’s blind and uses his daughter, Sabbath Lily Hawks, to beg for and collect whatever coins are offered.
- Although he’s a false preacher, Hawks has enough insight to peg Hazel Motes for what he is—a natural-born preacher imbued with the “spirit of Jesus.”
- Hawks treats his daughter poorly, abandoning her after Hazel exposes his fraudulent blindness.
3
Q
Sabbath Hawks:
A
- Sabbath Hawks is a teenage girl who helps her father, Asa get money from the faithful or people on the street.
- She knows her father is a fraud and is not blind but realizes their livelihood depends on maintaining the con.
- She takes a shine to Hazel Motes and wants him as a lover or husband.
- She is aware of how precarious her life with her father is. True to his nature, Sabbath’s father abandons her even though she fails to seduce and snare Hazel.
4
Q
Mrs. Flood:
A
The Hawks and Haze’s landlady. Wants to marry Haze.
5
Q
Hoover Shoat:
A
- Promoter fake “Church of Christ without Christ” Hoover Shoats,
- Also goes by the name Onnie Jay Holy, is a charismatic con man who distorts Hazel Motes’s anti-Christian message to make it more palatable to the public and more profitable for himself.
- He’s a true modern who sees only money and materialism in religion.
- He perverts Hazel’s harsh teachings by promising listeners happiness through his “new jesus.”
- He even hires a Hazel look-alike (Solace Layfield) to brazenly out-compete Hazel and his “business” by stealing Hazel’s audience from him.
6
Q
Solace Layfield:
A
- Fake Jesus, in Christ without Christ Church
- killed by Haze
7
Q
Ganga the Gorilla:
A
- Man who wears a gorilla suit to promote movies
- killed by Haze
8
Q
Author:
A
Flannery O’ Connor
