Probing Into The It-world

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) is one of the most important Southern female writers in the postwar America. Wise Blood is O'Conner's first novel and since its publication in 1952 it has always been regarded as a book difficult to understand with its absurd plot, grotesque characters, gothic horror, complex system of symbols and images. It is only after the publication of her other works that the novel becomes gradually accessible to readers and more critics are drawn to the interpretation of its seemingly unfathomable themes. The present thesis argues that Wise Blood is a serious work that probes into the significance of human existence from a Christian perspective. In O'Conner's point of view, the world of Wise Blood is an It-world, where the relationship between man and the world can be described as the mode of "I-It" instead of the mode of "I-You". Trapped in the It-world, the It-dwellers suffer from the lack of morality and their cynical disbelief in anything. People in such a world are indifferent and hostile to each other and are enveloped by alienation, anxiety, loss, desperation and nothingness. Technically, to shock the insensible modern readers from their numbness of their humanity, O'Connor applies some very radical means to show how insane and ugly people sometimes can be. As a writer filled with a very strong sense of social responsibility, O'Connor not only endeavors to reveal in her novel the sins and evils of the modern people in the modern society but also attempts to point out their ways of salvation. She holds the point of view that on account of the limitations and sins of human beings one has to convert himself whole-heartily to God to pursue his spiritual redemption. Hazel Motes' twisted spiritual search along with Enoch Emery's absurd and failed quest for something he is desirous of consistsof a metaphorical world which is presented to readers at the same time shockingly and enlighteningly.The present thesis tries to apply Martin Buber's theory of "Ontology of Between" and O'Connor's own assumptions of fiction writing to interpret the novel from a new perspective. Such an effort at the interpretation of the themes of the novel is substantially helped with, and can not satisfactorily be paid off, without the examples resulted from the repeated close-readings of the novel itself.The introductory part of the present thesis traces the history of the researches done on Wise Blood by critics abroad and home. Also included in this part are some explanatory remarks on Martin Buber's theory of "Ontology of Between" in the hope that such explanation can suffice as the theoretical background to serve as a very convenient point of departure for any sound and significant contribution to the interpretation of the themes of the novel.Chapter One of my thesis is devoted to a detailed discussion of the world of Wise Blood, or in the more metaphorical term, the It-world. Through analyzing the fictional city, Taulkinham and its dwellers, what I want to argue is that the world of Wise Blood is a highly commercialized society filled with spiritual blindness, moral degeneration and social corruption. In keeping with O'Conner's ways of implicating the messages of her artistic creations, the more disgusting the It-world is represented to the readers, the more palpable her implication becomes that such a world needs the necessary and urgent spiritual redemption.Chapter Two focuses on the analyses of the protagonist, Hazel Motes and his twisted spiritual searches which are presented in turn as the Fall, the Redemption and the Salvation. Such searches serve as the illustration of the more fundamental theme of what has been previously called as the spiritual redemption of the It-world.The theme of such spiritual redemption of the It-world is further reinforced in chapter Three where analyses are made about Enoch Emery's absurd and failed quest of something he is desirous of. The focus, this time, is put on Enoch Emery's "wise blood", which is the thematic term that can be understood as one's own instinct. S...