History Literature / WiseBlood

* BerserkButton: Enoch really hates animals, like the ones he sees in the zoo he works for, and gets mad when he sees them.

* TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive: The harder Hazel tries to resist God's calling, the more his life goes off the rails.

* RefusalOfTheCall: Hazel is determined (at his own peril) not to give in to the "ragged figure" (aka Jesus himself) who haunts him.

Hazel Motes is the grandson of a preacher. After serving in UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar, where he didn't so much lose his faith as realize that he never wanted that faith in the first place, he returns to Tennessee. He finds living without Christ to be more complicated than he expected, and that it's harder to give up preaching than it was to renounce Jesus.

* BlackComedy

** Hazel Motes' last name is reminiscent of Jesus' admonition to remove the plank of wood from your own eye before you complain of the mote in your brother's eye.

* SouthernGothic

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wise_blood.jpg]]

* SouthernGothic

* EsotericHappyEnding: Few endings could be bleaker, as the world accounts it. From O'Connor's viewpoint, though, it's unclear whether even Hazel's most dogged efforts were enough to escape from that "ragged figure" that haunts him. The book suggests that [[spoiler:not only didn't he escape that figure's grace in the end, his death may have made him a weird conduit of grace for others, including the landlady]].

Hazel Motes is the grandson of a preacher. After serving in TheKoreanWar, where he didn't so much lose his faith as realize that he never wanted that faith in the first place, he returns to Tennessee. He finds living without Christ to be more complicated than he expected, and that it's harder to give up preaching than it was to renounce Jesus.

''Wise Blood'' is a 1952 novel[[note]]four chapters were initially published as short stories in 1948 and 1949[[/note]] by Creator/FlanneryOConnor. In 1979, it was adapted into a film by JohnHuston.

* FilleFatale: Sabbath Lily Hawks.

''Wise Blood'' is a 1952 novel[[hottip:*:four chapters were initially published as short stories in 1948 and 1949]] by Creator/FlanneryOConnor. In 1979, it was adapted into a film by JohnHuston.

''Wise Blood'' is a 1952 novel[[hottip:*:four chapters were initially published as short stories in 1948 and 1949]] by FlanneryOConnor. In 1979, it was adapted into a film by JohnHuston.

Hazel Motes is the grandson of a preacher. After serving in the Korean War, where he didn't so much lose his faith as realize that he never wanted that faith in the first place, he returns to Tennessee. He finds living without Christ to be more complicated than he expected, and that it's harder to give up preaching than it was to renounce Jesus.