One of absurd characteristic is a ‘going away from’ a norm, a questioning of the validity of human reason itself from which our perceptions of natural laws
arise. The norm is considered useless and meaningless. 17 When Haze started across the street, Enoch yelled, “Don’t
you see theter light That means you got to wait” The policeman looked at him without saying anything. A few
people stopped. He rolled his eyes at them. “Maybe you thought the red ones was for white folks and the green ones for niggers,”
he said. “Yeah I thought that,” haze said. “That your hand off me.”
Fitzgerald, 1988: 24 18“Where’s your license?” the patrolman said.
“I don’t have a license.” Haze said. “Well,” the patrolman said in a kindly voice, “I don’t reckon you
need one.” “Well I ain’t got one if I do,” haze said. Fitzgerald, 1988: 117
From the examples above, it is clearly known that for Hazel, norm is not for him. It is a must that a person who has car should have a driver license, but for
Hazel it is not. Hazel keeps walking while the light is red, not because he does not know the rule, but it is because he does not care.
3.4 Mystery
Mystery is something unexplained, unknown, or kept secret. The essential mystery of life is what the interesting to O’Connor in even the most grotesque
elements of her stories. In her letters, O’Connor speaks of her quest to understand the mechanism and mystery behind a good story:
I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story, and I have decided that it is probably some
action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicated where the real heart of the story lies.
This would have to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that
was both in character and beyond character; it would have to
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suggest both the world and eternity. The action or gesture I’m talking about would have to be on the anagogical level, that is, the
level which has to do with the Divine life and our participation in it. It would be a gesture that transcended any neat allegory that
might have been intended or any pat moral categories a reader could make. It would be a gesture which somehow made contact
with reality. http:www.mrrena.commiscflannery.shtml
O’Connor insists that God’s will is not explained by natural, determinable event or behavior. It gives us the reason why O’Connor creates characters who
cannot be explained as a way of shocking her readers into a recognition of myth as mystery. Hazel Motes is one of O’Connor character whose behavior cannot be
understood. 19 He stopped at a supply store and bought a tin bucket and a
sack of quicklime and then he went on to where he lived, carrying these… His landlady was sitting on the porch, looking a cat.
“What you going to do with that, Mr. Motes?” she asked.
“Blind myself,” he said and went on in the house. Fitzgerald, 1988: 119 It is not clear why Hazel Motes does something extreme after killing
Solace Layfield, the false prophet. Hazel, who always looks for Asa Hawks, the blind preacher
3
3
Hazel still does not know that Asa Hawks pretends to be blind.
, to ask why Asa Hawks blinds himself for his faith, blinds himself with quicklime after he murders the false prophet, who preaches for money.
20 She stood for some time, holding the shoes, and finally she put them back under the cot. In a few days she examined them
again and they were lined with fresh rocks. Who’s he doing this for? She asked herself. What’s he getting out of doing it? Every
now and then she would have an intimation of something hidden near her but out of her reach. “Mr. Motes,” she said that day when
he was in her kitchen eating his dinner, “what do you walk on rocks for?”
“To pay,” he said in harsh voice. “Pay for what?”
“It don’t make any difference for what,” he said. “I’m paying” “But what have you got to show that you’re paying for?” she
persisted.
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“Mind your business,” he said rudely. “You can’t see.” Fitzgerald, 1988: 125
Readers have questions as Mrs. Flood asks when she sees Hazel Motes treats himself: why would anybody blind himself? Why does Hazel Motes walk
on rocks? Why does Hazel Motes strap barbed wire to his body? Why not just repents and follows God he leaves before? What the readers know is that Hazel
does these things after he kills Solace Layfield. O’Connor writes in her letter to Carl Hartman Fitzgerald: 920 that Haze
does not come into his absolute integrity until he blinds himself. Vision becomes real only after he loses his sight. Nevertheless, O’Connor does not give a clear
explanation more in the novel. At the end of the novel, the readers attention is drawn inward, from Mrs. Flood into Hazel’s ravaged eyes, and then into Mrs.
Flood’s mind’s eyes. Only then, we do have the image of Hazel moving farther and farther away until he becomes a pinpoint of light. Hazel dies, but he gets
salvation. The story ends and O’Connor does not give any clues further. O’Connor leaves the story as mystery. Readers will never know why Hazel could
achieve redemption through his blindness. Is it really the way to achieve salvation? However for O’Connor, God’s gift of salvation cannot be limited by
human’s knowledge. It is the mysterious way of God. O’Connor writes to Miss A in one of her letter:
I didn’t mean to suggest that science is unreliable, but only that we can’t judge God by the limits of our knowledge of natural thing. I
see God as all perfect, all complete, all powerful. God is Love and I would not believe Love efficacious if I believed there were
negative stages or imperfections in it. God became not only a man, but Man. This is the mystery of the Redemption. Fitzgerald, 1988:
954
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In her letters O’Connor says that Hazel’s sacrifice will be paid because Haze actually believes in the redemption. O’Connor adds that if Hazel has not
believed in it, he would not have to reject it so vigorously, because as the readers see, the society is not forcing it on him. But it will leave a question, how a self-
blind, or as O’Connor calls it sacrifice, could bring Hazel to redemption after he kills someone. Though O’Connor gives explanations on her letters, the
explanations end with statement that God’s grace of salvation is a mystery. In Wise Blood, O’Connor often depicts Hazel with “as-if” construction.
There are 98 as-if construction in all, and Hazel is associated with 47 of them. It shows us that O’Connor makes a point that it is necessary to describe Hazel’s
action with as-if construction. The examples follow: 21 Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train
seat, looking one minutes at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the
car. Fitzgerald, 1988: 1 22 He had seen the shadow that came down over her face, and
pulled her mouth down as if she wasn’t any more satisfied dead that alive, as if she were going to spring up and shove the lid back
and fly out and satisfy herself: but they shut it. Fitzgerald, 1988: 14
23 His black hat sat on his head with a careful, placed expression and his face had a fragile look as if it might have been broken and
stuck together again, or like a gun no one knows is loaded. Fitzgerald, 1988: 37
24 He pulled himself over into the front of the car and eased his foot on the starter and the Essex rolled off quietly as if nothing
were the matter with it. Fitzgerald, 1988: 92
O’Connor gives an external description of Hazel’s action in the first clause, but next she makes a detailed explanation of it with as-if clause. The as-if
clauses visualizes Hazel action, but because the as-if clause itself is also an
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external description of him, so after all readers cannot guess what makes Hazel act in that way. The as-if blocks readers from agreeable meaning: in effect, we are
always unsatisfied on the threshold of meaning.
3.5 Comic
