The Tragic Flaw Of ' Wise Blood ' By Flannery O ' Connor Essay

In her book Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor sends Hazel Motes on a journey her readers gladly follow. Looking for salvation, redemption, and truth Hazel Motes finds his faith and, consequently, himself. Sabbath Lily says about the man: "I like his eyes. They don't look like they see what he's looking at, but they keep on looking" (O’Connor, 105). Motes, intent on his search for salvation, for something beyond himself and those around him, is blind to all that is in front or around him. Salvation is hard, and the path is not easy, but by the end of the novel, he finds salvation and his own identity in a process of denial, confusion, and acceptance.

When hearing the word Tragedy, it would not be surprising if several different individuals would immediately think of several unique examples of the word. Perhaps one is an opera enthusiast who immediately thinks of Puccini’s La Boheme. Another is a war enthusiast that thinks about History Channel’s new episode highlighting the harshest and bloodiest battles of World War One. Even a third one obsessed with Greek mythology could generate a handful of examples of tragedy. Tragedy, like love or comedy is a universal theme that can be used to entertain, enlighten and excite its audiences. William Shakespeare, a world renown writer, was a master of this genre writing works, including Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet. Another lesser known

From the time he gets back from WW2, he creates the Church Without Christ which is him preaching his anti-religious beliefs on the streets. Throughout his time in Taulkinham, Haze keeps seeing Jesus in his mind, sees signs of Christianity everywhere, and is mistaken as a preacher on multiple occasions. In the essay, “Jesus, Stab Me in the Heart!”: Wise Blood, Wounding, and Sacramental Aesthetics, the author Robert H. Brinkmeyer, talks about Hazel not being able to escape Jesus. “Identifies Haze as a ‘Christian malgre lui’ whose integrity lies in his not being able to escape from his haunting vision of Christ” (Brinkmeyer, 71). As Brinkmeyer suggests here, Hazel continues to see Jesus in his mind, but as a ragged figure. “The boy didn’t need to hear it. There was already a black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin. He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher. Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown” (O’Connor, 16). Along with these appearances, Hazel encounters many religious and Christian related signs. These appearing signs create

Many people today consider Wise Blood to be one of history’s greatest examples of Southern gothic literature. With its twisted plot, scenes of self-mutilation, and overall dark tone it is easy to understand why people from all find Wise Blood to be dark and depressing. However, Flannery O’Connor, the novel’s author, claims that she wrote the novel to be a comedy, rather than a tragedy (O’Connor). The elements of the novel that O’Connor and others have considered especially “comedic” are its examples of surprise, mistaken identities, and especially, irony. Readers can find irony throughout the entirety of Wise Blood, as well as its theme of fate over free will. Irony ties in with this theme often through the characters’ actions, thoughts, and emotions.

    By definition, a tragedy is a story that details the downfall of a protagonist. Most often, the protagonist (tragic hero) is a member of high society who is faced with an oppositional force, be it internal or external. In his Poetics, Aristotle states that "tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these- thought and character- are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions, again all success or failure depends...." This quote illustrates an aspect of tragedy upon which many works are based, including

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

When we think of the tragedy, we think of something bad happening to someone. This cannot be a tragedy. To know what tragedy is we have to take a look at what Arthur Miller thinks of as tragic.

A tragedy is beginning with a problem that affects everyone, for example, the whole town or all the characters involved, the tragic hero must solve this problem and this results in his banishment or death. A comedy is defined as also beginning with a problem, but one of less significant importance. The characters try to solve the problem and the story ends with all the characters uniting in either a marriage of a party. Although these two genres are seen as being complete opposites of each other, through further analysis one can gather that though they are different certain similarities can also be seen.

People have always been fascinated with the tragedy and death of others. Tragedy is the realizing of the ultimate truth of life, and comedy is finding the joys of life. Mythology can stem from both tragedy and comedy.

Tragedy is a common genre in many plays especially in Shakespeare works. A tragedy is a play that has a catastrophic event that ends with an unhappy ending or the main

Eric Bentley said that a Tragedy is dependent on comedy. Comic relief is used in tragedies to change the atmosphere of the reader, who is constantly focusing on the death and corruption of a tragedy. If a play were full of the death and sorrow, as in tragedies, it would make the reader very depressed and not like the play. Some examples of this in Hamlet, are in the Gravedigger Scene, Talking to the Skull and the Throwing of the book.

In a comparison of comedy and tragedy, I will begin by looking at narrative. The narration in a comedy often involves union and togetherness as we see in the marriage scene at the end of Midsummer's Night Dream. William Hazlitt tells us that one can also expect incongruities, misunderstandings, and contradictions. I am reminded of the play The Importance of Being Ernest and the humor by way of mistaken identity. Sigmund Freud tells us to expect excess and exaggeration in comedy. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal displays this excess both in language and in movements. Charles Darwin insists that in a comedy "circumstances must not be of a momentous nature;" whereas, Northop Frye identifies

Although many Shakespearean plays are very similar to one another, two stand out from the rest as sharing a great deal in common. Specific, solid parallels can be drawn between Shakespeare's plays "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Romeo and Juliet." The themes and characters are remarkably similar in many aspects. Firstly, both plays highlight the stereotypical young lovers - Hermia and Lysander in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Romeo and Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet." Secondly, both plays are very ambiguously categorized. By this I mean that each could have been a tragedy just as easily as a drama (with a few minor modifications). By definition, a tragic play is a play in which the main character has a fatal flaw that leads to

There are many characteristics that make up a comedy. Characteristics such as mistaken identity, battle of the sexes, and jumping to conclusions are what set the comedic story apart from the tragedy. Within a comedy, no matter how much fault, and dismay may appear within the story, there always seems to be the classic ending of “…and they all lived happily ever after…” Comedies capture the viewer with a sense of compassion and love for the characters in the story. Each character has their own essence, to which they pertain a flaw of some sorts, which the audience can relate to. With the relation to characters there is defiantly a certain interest that is grabbed by the actors, which sucks the audience into the