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    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"
    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"
    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"
    Ebook45 pages33 minutes

    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535843218
    A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"

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      A Study Guide for Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood" - Gale

      4

      Wise Blood

      Flannery O'Connor

      1952

      Introduction

      The story of a man named Hazel Motes, who denies his Christianity and takes desperate measures to prove his disbelief, Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood made its debut in 1952. Harcourt Brace published the novel right after O'Connor spent a difficult winter suffering from symptoms that doctors later diagnosed as systemic lupus erythematosus. Critics concur that the disease greatly affected O'Connor's life and work, while they question the specific effects it had on her fiction. Many think that O'Connor's use of the grotesque arose from her own experiences with a disease-ravaged body, yet the general consensus is that O'Connor's religious southern upbringing was the most important influence on her writing.

      When Wise Blood first appeared, critics gave it little attention and few accolades. O'Connor was not well known, and she was writing at the same time as famous writers William Faulkner and Daphne du Maurier. Critics viewed O'Connor as a minor writer, and put her in the same category as other Southern writers of the time, based on her use of violence and bizarre characters. The novel's religious meaning, later to become its strength, escaped recognition. Critic Isaac Rosenfeld, for example, stated in New Republic that Motes is nothing more than the poor, sick, ugly, raving lunatic that he happens to be.

      While most reviewers believed O'Connor's own testimony to the religious meaning in Wise Blood, novelist John Hawkes criticized O'Connor as being somewhat captivated by the Devil. Since that time in 1962, however, critics have defended O'Connor's purpose. They applaud her ability to present her basic theme of Christ's redemption of mankind. In the final analysis, critics now view Wise Blood as an outstanding religious novel.

      Author Biography

      Flannery O'Connor wrote from her experiences as a Roman Catholic raised in the Protestant South. Her religion and regional upbringing greatly contributed to her themes and writing style. Yet critics agree that her father's death from lupus—as well as her own later suffering from the same disease—were also significant influences on her writing.

      Born Mary Flannery O'Connor to Edward Francis and Regina Cline O'Connor on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, O'Connor lived in that southern city until the Great Depression forced the family to seek job opportunities elsewhere. O'Connor and her parents moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, where her grandparents lived and where she attended high school and college. While the family was living in Milledgeville, O'Connor's father died of systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus or SLE), a disease that results when the body's immune system goes out of control. O'Connor was thirteen at the time.

      During her high school and college years, O'Connor demonstrated

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