A Gleam Of Hope In A Spiritual Desert

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) is universally acknowledged as one of the most prominent fiction writers in post-war America. Wise Blood is her first novel. This MA thesis demonstrates how Hazel Motes gradually accomplishes his conversion to God in the city of Taulkinham. In the modern era, people are indulged in material pursuit. The world is in moral degeneration and is pervaded with sins and vices. Consequently, people feel spiritually empty and, with their loss of faith, their soul is homeless.This MA thesis, based upon earlier researches, applies the New Critical method and cultural studies methods to analyzing the novel. It focuses especially on the spiritual quest of Hazel Motes.Chapter One analyzes what Taulkinham is like and what its dwellers are longing for. The thesis maintains that the novel presents a wasteland world in which people have no spiritual belief.Chapter Two attempts to reveal that Enoch Emory with his intuitive impulse is so deeply obsessed with material pursuit that he becomes an utterly grotesque figure and his failure, or his alienation from God and his self, makes a sharp contrast to Hazel Motes'spiritual search.Chapter Three, the most significant chapter, makes a comprehensive discussion of how Hazel Motes through his painful spiritual quest in this spiritual desert place stands out from all the secularized characters and regains his belief in Jesus Christ. This chapter holds that compared with Enoch, Hazel takes a quite different road. He on surface makes every effort against Christ; however, deep in his soul he is in search of truth and God. It is this dynamic tension that facilitates Hazel's psychological transformation and spiritual maturation. At last, he is endowed with God's grace and is saved.After all these discussions, the MA thesis finally stresses that O'Connor, on the one hand, expresses her fundamental Christian belief in salvation through Hazel Motes'spiritual quest and, on the other hand, delivers a warning to those lost in material pursuit and without spiritual belief.