Wise Blood: A Critical Reconsideration - Literary Analysis & Book Review for American Readers | Perfect for Book Clubs & Academic Studies

This volume is a collection of critical essays on Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood. The opening essays analyze the novel from a religious perspective, providing insights into O'Connor's theology and how it effects the world and the characters she creates in the novel. The middle set of essays analyze some of the humor in the book, some of the influences on O'Connor (including Kafka and Dostoevsky), and structural issues. The final set of essays (which, unfortunately, I did not have time to read) examine gender and cultural issues in the novel and discuss the film adaptation of the novel.I found Wise Blood to be somewhat opaque. I knew next to nothing about O'Connor before reading it. I knew she was a Catholic with a reputation for writing brutal books but other than that I knew very little about her theology or her worldview. When I finished the book I was not really sure what I was supposed to make of it. What were we, as readers, supposed to think about characters as strange as Haze and Enoch? Were we supposed to feel hopeful over Haze's "conversion"? Was it genuine? What about Enoch's "conversion"?This set of essays helped me get my bearings. I read a lot of literary criticism and the main reason I read it is because it helps me organize my thoughts about a book. Reading literary criticism is like looking for circling vultures in the sky. It lets you know where the meat is. The parts of a novel that critics circle around and debate are often (though, perhaps, not always) the most interesting parts. Even if you disagree with a particular author they they can still help guide you to the meat. Once you are there you can taste it and make up your own mind.I was not blown away by this volume but it definitely helped me find the meat in O'Connor's novel. I am not going to summarize every essay but I want to summarize a couple. The ones I found most interesting. Unfortunately, I got this book from the library and I have already returned it and I did not take the best notes. It is not always clear from my notes whether I was writing down what the author was saying in the essay or the thoughts I had in response to the essay but I will do my best to remain faithful to the authors's intentions in my summaries, and apologize in advance if I accidentally put words in someone's mouth."Flannery O'Connor and the Question of the Christian Novel" by Debra L. CumberlandDebra Cumberland attempts to determine "what kind of a depiction of Christianity and the Christian experience is actually conveyed in the novel" (5) Debra is ultimately somewhat critical of O'Connor's version of Christianity as portrayed in the novel. For one thing, it is too Manichaean. The material world is evil and the spiritual world is good. Haze draws away from the world into isolation while Enoch plunges into his animal self. There is no reconciliation of the animal and spiritual halves of man. They are split asunder. The material world is ultimately left out of Christ's act of redemption in the novel.This worldview infects the humor in the novel which is bitter, satiric, and full of sarcastic derision (15) It is not "redemptive humor". Cumberland makes a good point "...'it is impossible to love God and to have contempt for the sins and weaknesses of other people at the same time.' Yet this is exactly what Haze does" (16) Haze's conversion does not come with a corresponding sense of compassion for the sins and errors of the world. Quite the opposite: it isolates him even further from the world. He has even more contempt for the world in the end than he did in the beginning (if that is possible).Cumberland concludes that Wise Blood does not present a Christian conversion or the act of grace or redemption but it still may be a Christian novel because it portrays a Christian vision of hell (18-19)"Virgil if Punched in the Gut: A Defense of Jansenist Interpretations of Wise Blood" by Andrew Peter AtkinsonAtkinson begins with a brief introduction to Jansenism as a theological doctrine. Briefly put, Jansenism posits a radical separation between nature and grace with a corresponding devaluation of nature. The novel is Jansenist in theological outlook because Haze does not cooperate with grace. In fact, he actively works against it. He does everything in his power to deny Christ and his redemptive grace but he fails. Grace conquers nature in the end.According to Atkinson, "What Wise Blood lacks are characters who love virtue for virtue's sake", i.e. the virtuous pagan (Virgil). If I may be allowed to add my own thought to this: I think this is one of the ways in which O'Connor stacks the deck. She drives the reader toward the necessity for an act of supernatural redemption, and to do so she begins with a description of the world without grace, but her description lacks everything we would recognize as human. It is a world without love, community, morality, friendship, or any other purely "human" virtue. She sucks the world dry, presents the shell, and then asks "Isn't something missing from your supposedly self-contained secular world?""The Dostoevskyan Structure of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood" by Lylas Dayton RommelRommel compares the worldview of O'Connor with that of Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was Orthodox while O'Connor was, of course, Catholic. This led to differences in their world views. For example, O'Connor's worldview was rooted in the natural law of the Catholic Church. For O'Connor, without the Catholic Church and natural law as guarantees of order the political world descends into chaos. But, for Dostoevsky, "The idea of equality among individual people based simply on the humanity of each is sufficient to discover moral principles" (294). This does not require uniformity of belief while for O'Connor uniformity of belief is necessary to avoid chaos.Rommel also highlights the different uses of shame in the two authors. In Dostoevsky, shame "derives from isolation from human community", i.e. from a failure to admit your fundamental equality with your fellow human beings. For O'Connor, shames "derives from participation in a false political system." Rommel argues that "shame for a system that allows people to believe and behave however they want pervades the structure of Wise Blood" (295)Rommel ends with what I think is a great quote so I will present it in full, "The Christian response to the complexity of the modern world is to see the 'other' as Christ, not to blame him or her...The fear that modern moral choice is really an excuse for nihilism and relativism can be overcome by compassion for the human suffering of blind and limited persons trying to do the best they can under the difficult circumstances of modern life...respect for different perspectives preserves human freedom in ways that O'Connor's argument does not" (302)You will probably notice a common theme in the essays I chose to highlight. They are all somewhat critical of O'Connor's religious vision. This was, basically, my response to the novel as well. I actually really enjoyed the novel as a novel and I think it had a lot to recommend it. However, I have some fairly profound theological and ideological differences with O'Connor and her novel is saturated in her own theology. It is impossible, I think, to totally separate the novel, considered as a piece of art for aesthetic contemplation, and O'Connor's theology.Actually, I do not believe there is such a thing as "pure aesthetic contemplation" divorced from a concern with truth. The things we find beautiful are tied up with judgments about their truth. So, my own analysis of O'Connor's novel is tied up with my appraisal of the ideas contained in it. However, I will say that not all the essays in the book are critical of O'Connor so, if you love O'Connor, and are in general agreement with her theology, I would not let my review deter you from this volume. You will find plenty of food to enjoy and you can spit out the rest.