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Wise Blood Quiz

Take our free Wise Blood quiz below, with 25 multiple choice questions that help you test your knowledge. Determine which chapters, themes and styles you already know and what you need to study for your upcoming essay, midterm, or final exam. Take the free quiz now!

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Questions 1-5 of 25:

What does the landlady do to keep Sabbath Lily from living with Haze? (from Chapter 14)

What happens to the rug when enoch attempts to clean it (from chapter 8), what does haze declare to both the waitress and the owl at the zoo (from chapter 5), what trait does sabbath lily say she and haze share (from chapter 10), why does haze's landlady continue to raise his rent (from chapter 14).

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Flannery O’Connor

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Flannery O’Connor’s novel follows the experience of two protagonists, Hazel Motes and Enoch Emory .

Hazel, or Haze, is from the small town of Eastrod, but everyone in his family is now dead, and he has no home to return to after serving in the army. He was raised very religiously and planned to become a preacher like his grandfather, who instilled in him a strong sense of his own guilt and the deadliness of sin, both of which require the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. Over the course of his time in the army, though, Hazel comes to believe that there is no such thing as a soul, and he becomes a passionate atheist.

As he makes his way to a new life in Taulkinham, Hazel has a series of awkward, bitter interactions with the people he encounters, who often mistake him for a preacher – he has a quarrel with Mrs . Wally Bee Hitchcock on the train, and a porter whom Hazel is convinced comes from Eastrod leaves him locked in his berth after he has a nightmare about coffins . Another quarrel about his identity as a preacher ensues with the taxi driver who takes Hazel from the train station to the home of Mrs. Leora Watts , a prostitute whose address Hazel finds in a bathroom stall. After Leora tells Hazel that “Momma don’t care” if he’s a preacher, he sleeps with her, the first time he has been with a woman. The next day he encounters the blind preacher, Asa Hawks , and his daughter, Sabbath Lily , and follows them, followed in turn by the eighteen-year-old Enoch Emory , who is a newcomer working at the zoo in Taulkinham.

After a confrontation with Asa Hawks, Hazel decides to found the Church Without Christ to preach his message that Jesus is a liar, that all men are “clean,” and there is no such thing as sin or redemption. Hazel buys himself a car with forty dollars, a beat-up old Essex that barely runs, but he is convinced it is perfect. He finds Enoch at the zoo, but cannot get Enoch to tell him the Hawks’ address. He follows the Hawks home one night, and ends up renting a room upstairs in their boarding house. He decides to seduce the daughter, Sabbath, as a means of proving his convictions to Asa, but fails to reckon with Sabbath’s wily, experienced, and persistent attempts to seduce him in return. Hazel begins to preach from on top of his car outside of movie theaters, but fails to gather any disciples – except for one, Onnie Jay Holy (whose real name is Hoover Shoats), who turns out to be a conman, interested only in using Hazel’s platform to make money. When Hazel rejects his efforts, revealing that the “new jesus” he has been preaching about is only a figure of speech, Shoats recruits another man, Solace Layfield , to impersonate Hazel, and begins to preach across the street from him.

Hazel is deeply affected by the sight of his double, combined with his discovery that Asa Hawks is a fraud – a man who lost his nerve and failed to blind himself in his early days as a committed preacher, but then pretended to be blind. Hazel returns home in his car to find Sabbath waiting in his bed. He undresses entirely, except for his hat , which she takes off for him, calling him the “king of the beasts” as he finally gives in to her romantic advances. The next day Hazel resolves to escape and leave the city, but seems to snap entirely when Sabbath appears in the doorway cradling a mummy that Enoch delivered that morning, forming a Madonna-like image. Hazel destroys the mummy, and that night he follows his impersonator, Solace Layfield, and confronts him in his car. Hazel tells Solace to take off his suit and hat, and then Hazels runs him over with his car, killing him.

Enoch, meanwhile, is a lonely eighteen-year-old boy, who has lived in Taulkinham for two months and works at the city zoo. He displays more “animal” tendencies in contrast to Hazel’s spiritual side, and is deeply affected by food, women, animals, and aggression in any form. Possibly mentally ill, Enoch is driven by the instincts he refers to as his “wise blood .” When he first encounters Hazel, Enoch follows him like a lost dog looking for a friend. Later, he draws Hazel into his daily ritual in the city park, desperate to show him the dark secret center of the city that only he knows about – a shrunken corpse in the city museum. Hazel runs away, however, and throws a stone at Enoch’s head when he tries to follow him.

Later, Enoch finds himself following the voice of his “wise blood,” despite his efforts to avoid its call. He cleans up a tabernacle-like cabinet in his room, and then feels compelled to go to the movie theater, where he finally runs out during a movie about an orangutan who saves children from a burning building – Enoch feels a deep antagonism toward animals. Hearing Hazel preaching afterward about the need for a “new jesus,” Enoch realizes that his task will be to steal the shrunken man from the museum. This is what the cabinet in his room has been prepared to receive. On his way to deliver the corpse to Hazel, though, burning with regret and tormented by the rain, Enoch stumbles upon a publicity event for Gonga the Gorilla , where the star will appear to shake the hands of a line of waiting children.

Planning to insult the gorilla, and ready for his “supreme moment,” Enoch waits in line, but when he shakes Gonga’s warm hand – the first that has been offered to him since he arrived in Taulkinham – he finds himself telling Gonga about himself and his life. The human actor behind the gorilla’s mask leans forward and tells him to go to hell, and Enoch runs away, humiliated. After delivering the damaged bundle to Sabbath Hawks, Enoch waits for his reward from the new jesus, and finds it in a newspaper advertisement for Gonga’s last appearance. Enoch sneaks into the back of the truck with the “gorilla,” and murders him with the sharp end of his broken umbrella. Then Enoch leaves the truck, strips, buries his clothes, and puts on the gorilla suit, transforming in a moment of ultimate joy. He comes across a couple on the edge of the woods and tries to shake their hands, but they run away. He is left sitting alone, looking out over the city.

Meanwhile, Hazel has cleaned off Solace’s blood from his car and decides to leave the city forever, eager to start a new life elsewhere. On the highway five miles out of town, though, he is stopped by a vengeful police officer, who tricks him into driving to the top of a hill and then pushes his car off the embankment. In that moment, Hazel seems to withdraw entirely into himself, and doesn’t respond to the policeman at all. He walks the five miles back to town, buys some lime and a bucket, and blinds himself, as Asa had promised and failed to do years earlier. Mrs. Flood , his landlady, becomes more and more obsessed with Hazel’s strange ways, as he goes on living a very monkish lifestyle in the house, throwing away whatever money he doesn’t spend on rent and barely speaking to anyone. Mrs. Flood discovers that Hazel is walking miles each day in shoes that are filled with stones and glass, and that he wears barbed wire around his chest. When Mrs. Flood confronts him about this, Hazel tells her that he has to pay, and that he is unclean. More and more curious about the mysteries that drive Hazel, Mrs. Flood proposes that they get married, but this horrifies him. After Mrs. Flood’s proposal, Hazel dresses and leaves, going out into a freezing storm. He is found two days later by a pair of policemen, one of whom accidentally kills Hazel by hitting him over the head with a billy club. Thinking he is still alive, the policemen deliver Hazel to Mrs. Flood. She props his dead body up in her bed and stares into his empty eye sockets, her own eyes closed, imagining the dark world inside of him gradually receding into the distance until all that is left is a single point of light.

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by Flannery O'Connor

Wise blood summary and analysis of chapters 11-12.

On the same day as the events of Chapter 10, Enoch Emery sneaks into the museum and steals the mummified man that he showed to Hazel Motes. He takes it back to his room and puts it in the cabinet he prepared. The next day he carries the mummy, wrapped up in newspaper, intending to give it to Hazel. However, on the way he stops by a movie theater, where his attention is seized by an advertised event where children can shake hands with Gonga, a gorilla that has appeared in many movies.

When Gonga arrives, Enoch becomes terribly nervous and begins to introduce himself to the gorilla as he shakes its hand. However, he is shocked when the gorilla tells him, "You can go to hell" (182); Gonga is no more than a man in a gorilla suit.

In near complete disorientation, Enoch finds his way with the bundled mummy to Hazel's and hands it over to Sabbath, who opens it and comes to claim it as her and Hazel's child. Meanwhile Hazel, who has caught something like consumption (tuberculosis), is trying to throw all his things into his suitcase and run off to another town to preach; when Sabbath comes in with the "baby", he throws it against the wall and tries to leave. However, feeling too sick, he comes back in.

After the shock of his experience with Gonga and his delivering the mummy to Hazel, Enoch returns to his room and waits, expecting some reward for what he has done. Intending to distinguish himself in some way, he leaves with an umbrella he has converted into a sort of walking stick or stake. When he reads in the newspaper at the diner that Gonga will make one final appearance in the city, he realizes what he must do. Upon making his way to the theater where the meet and greet is being held, he sneaks into the back of Gonga's truck and then beats the man dressed up as the gorilla as the truck drives to another city.

Enoch escapes from the truck, takes off and buries his own clothes, and then gets into the gorilla suit he has stolen. He approaches a young couple with his hand outstretched for a handshake, but scares them off. He sits down and looks over at the view of the city.

Perhaps more than any other chapter, Chapter 11 is full of parodies of biblical stories, beginning with the ridiculous faux-religious experience that Enoch has with the "new jesus" that he has consecrated in his "ark" or "tabernacle" of a cabinet. One line from this passage is particularly telling: "So far as he was now concerned, one jesus was as bad as another" (176). Of course, we have been encountering this oddly lowercase "jesus" standing in for the uppercase, proper noun "Jesus" ever since Hazel started asking for a "new jesus," and now Enoch takes the idea to its logical conclusion: namely, that there is not one Jesus but many jesuses, which are plain objects of curiosity, almost like the commercial products that the city is so full of.

However, Enoch still has a special sense of mission with this very un-special jesus, and so he delivers it with great haste and importance to Sabbath to give to Hazel, acting as a sort of angel Gabriel to Mary. The clearest biblical parallel is drawn, of course, when Sabbath adopts the child as her and Hazel's own, though she asks at first whose child it is, a parody of Mary's immaculate, that is virgin, conception. It is all the more a distortion because as Sabbath tells Enoch, she and Hazel have just spent the night making love. Now, if Sabbath is Mary, that would make Hazel Joseph; and just like Joseph, Hazel wakes up with an idea to go somewhere. However, it is not that he must stay with his "wife" and escape with her to Egypt as in the Bible, but that he must escape her.

The whole sequence that begins with Hazel's waking up is one of the most psychologically intense in the whole novel, including two details that recall elements from much earlier in the book. The first is the Bible and his mother's glasses that have been sitting at the bottom of Hazel's duffel bag, his only remaining possessions from his former life, and the second is the door that may have been a fire escape, a seemingly throwaway detail that is brought back up this one time for Hazel to throw away the mummy baby. Every detail in O'Connor's novel is intentional, each serving a psychological purpose, like the description of Enoch's blood, or a simple object, like the Bible and glasses that stand in for home for Hazel.

Enoch does not witness the destruction of his "new jesus", so he returns home and waits for his reward. Finally, he decides he cannot wait for a miracle, and his desire to have his hand shaken - and be accepted - by the city folk takes hold. A process of transformation begins when Enoch enters Gonga's van in order to steal his costume, and the way that O'Connor narrates it is perfectly suited to the action. We see Enoch disappear into the van: "Enoch suddenly darted across the street and slipped noiselessly into the open back door of the truck" (197). However, thereafter the description is impersonal, as though the narrator cannot see what is going on, though it is quite obvious what is going on: "There came from the van certain thumping sounds, not those of a normal gorilla…a figure slipped from the door and almost fell, and then limped hurriedly off toward the woods" (197-8). This figure is simply described as "he," though we know him to be Enoch; however, this is described, once again, from a point of view outside of Enoch, as though in a movie: "The darkness of the pine grove was broken by paler moonlit spots that moved over him now and again and showed him to be Enoch" (198). We do get back into Enoch's head for a few sentences, but once he dons the gorilla suit, he becomes the gorilla - O'Connor calls him a gorilla. Simply thinking of how this passage would sound if Enoch were always referred to by his own name, and if we saw the action from his eyes (e.g. beating up the actor playing Gonga, his thoughts while donning the suit), we should be able to appreciate the dramatic effect that O'Connor has created by relying mostly on actions to convey what is in fact one of the most emotional scenes of the novel.

It is a detail that might easily be missed, but earlier when describing Enoch's "ambition," O'Connor portrays it as a desire to shake people's hands; this is why Enoch's failed handshake - his first and only handshake - in the previous chapter affects him so. It is almost like Hazel sleeping with Leora Watts or Sabbath, an act of intimacy which instead only alienates. However, Enoch hopes that by taking on a famous figure's person, even if that figure is an animal, he may be able to do the handshake right. And so, we observe the strange motions of Enoch trying out his gorilla personality, making at first very typically animalistic displays but then becoming Gonga - that is, the man with the poisonous growl inside a gorilla suit who nevertheless is the center of everyone's attention and respect: "The figure extended its hand, clutched nothing, and shook. It repeated this four or five times" (199). Having accustomed himself to the motion, Enoch sets about looking for someone to actually shake hands with, but only ends up driving away the couple; that he settles into the melancholy, alienating view that they were looking at shows him at his "perfect resignation" again.

Wise Blood Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Wise Blood is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why does Hazel Motes walk with pebbles in his shoes.

I think this has something to do with experiencing what Christ did.

What makes Hazel a good christian?

Haunted by memories of his preacher grandfather and the terrifying image of Jesus his grandfather instilled in him, he begins to preach his own "Church Without Christ", professing there is no sin and no redemption, and that Jesus is a liar. Hazel...

How was man made

I'm not sure what you mean here. Please specify your question and include a chapter.

Study Guide for Wise Blood

Wise Blood study guide contains a biography of Flannery O'Connor, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Wise Blood
• Wise Blood Summary
• Character List

Essays for Wise Blood

Wise Blood essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.

• Unavoidable Destiny: Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Adaptation of Oedipus Rex
• Law and Ethics in Wise Blood
• And the Blind Will See: Analyzing Mrs. Flood and the Theme of Blindness in Wise Blood

Wikipedia Entries for Wise Blood

• Introduction

34 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-14

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-3 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 summary.

Flannery O’Connor’s first novel opens with the story’s protagonist , Hazel Motes , taking a train to the town of Taulkinham, Tennessee. Motes is returning home after four years at war, and he has just bought himself a brand new blue suit that still bears the $11.98 price tag. Sitting across from Motes in the train is a large woman, Mrs. Hitchcock; she attempts to make small talk with him but he initially ignores her.

It is revealed that Motes is from Eastrod, Tennessee, but when Mrs. Hitchcock asks him if he is returning home, he replies, “No, I ain’t … [I’m] Going to Taulkinham. Don’t know nobody there, but I’m going to do some things” (6). Mrs. Hitchcock begins rambling on about her family until Motes interrupts her by twice stating that “I reckon you think you been redeemed” (7). Mrs. Hitchcock blushes at this, but the two quickly agree to go to the train’s dining car together.  

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