It was a bit slow and meandering in the beginning, but by the end it gathers momentum and it’s really funny in a dark way. Wise Blood reads like Kafka but O’Connor goes further and makes a moral judgment on her characters instead of merely projecting the absurdity of the world. In Kafka the world is seen at eye level. Here the world is seen from the vantage point of God.
I feel a certain kinship to Hazel Motes, as someone who cannot believe in God yet simultaneously remains tethered to a Christian view of the world, one where sin is alive and one cannot truly and honestly partake of it without a squeak from one’s conscience. Hazel is stuck in the worst of both worlds, a world removed from the joy of faith and yet unable to fully partake in sin, like say Sabbath Hawks; or in finding making money to be more important than finding the truth, like Shoates; or merely pretending to be a preacher, like Asa Hawks. He blinds himself, and ultimately commits a kind of suicide of silence in the end, because he so badly wants to find redemption but cannot have it. He is alone in his moral seriousness (to find the “truth” as he tells Shoates) and yet the truth is not for him. The only sort of redemption any of the characters have is when Enoch Emery wears the gorilla suit, as if he reneges being human and its attendant worries and can enjoy the simple innocence of being a mere animal.
Does Haze achieve redemption in the end? It looks like it, but it’s a redemption that he comes to kicking and screaming, begrudgingly. He finds peace and yet it looks to be a peace from desolation. Is this truly the peace that passeth understanding?