Talk:Wise Blood

Bibliographic matter

Corrected info. about source of the stories that formed part of Wise Blood. 'Enoch and the Gorilla' was originally published in New World Writing. Though O'Connor did publish in Mademoiselle, the four stories in question here were not. This inaccuracy seems to have come from the National Book Foundation's page: http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaclassics_foconnor.html. The notes in the back of O'Connor's Collected Stories provide the correct info. There are plenty of references online as well to Enoch's original publication.

Untitled

is the Chartists that are said to be heretics the same as the Chartists in the link? the link goes to a political movement rathar than a heresy.

Misleading Sentences

I find this part highly objectionable:

Hazel begins as many O'Connor characters do, a victim of a misunderstanding of the radical Calvinism of the South. His evangelical grandfather taught him that Jesus died for the sins of mankind and that Jesus would always "get you": this Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God view of Christ leads Motes to view salvation as a form of punishment, so he decides that he can be saved from being evil by believing in nothing.

I guess this is one interpretation, but it's a bit hard to swallow for me. For one, I'm almost possitive that Hazel doesn't "view salvation as a form of punishment"---he is afraid of savlation, of the Jesus hiding in the dark woods. As for the "get you" part, I think O'Connor relished the idea of a Christ who will "get you" in the end, a predatory Christ who hunts those He loves. Of course, this is just what the author thought (I'm recalling this from reading her letters); but this view is, I think, just misleading about the text in general and what its trying to accomplish. Corbmobile 08:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The sentences are about Hazel's view. Given that O'Connor uses limited 3rd person to characterize Hazel's views and says that the grandfather carried Jesus "like a scorpion" in his mind, there really is no choice but to see this as a negative predatory image from Hazel's point of view. Of course from O'Connor's point of view Christ is not harmful. Jesus is "the Hound of Heaven" (a trope used by her favorite authors as well as spiritual authors) who hunts and retrieves the lost. Hazel thinks that Jesus is dangerous, imposed, and, most of all, the figure who tells you you're a sinner (and that's where the misunderstanding of radical Calvinism comes in) and is afraid. I quite agree that the sentences are not what O'Connor is trying to accomplish, but I think it's a fair summary of the character's view. Geogre 10:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I guess I'll bite, but I think that, with the references to specifics like "Calvinism of the South" and "Sinners in the Hands' of an Angry God". If your going to defend this as being the character's view, then I think it not quite right to include references to books the character probably never heard of.Corbmobile 10:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

It's limited 3rd. In other words, these are books that the author has read and a cosmology she puts her character into (with a twist). We should have more quotations from the text, if we were doing a critical article, but, of course, that's not encyclopedic. Geogre 12:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Fixed some surprising errors in the plot summary, including the name of the city and how the 'new jesus' was destroyed. Perhaps the previous summary was taken from the film?

Fixes

By all means, do fix errors. It wasn't that the summary was taken from the film, but from memory that was full of holes. The first version of this article was a substub dropped by an anonymous author. I attempted to do quick research to jog my memory to simply get us up to a "not totally embarrassing" status. However, beginning in Feb. '05, I've decided to re-read the novel from start to finish to actually make it a good article, and not just a not-dreadful article. That's why you've seen a great deal of activity lately, particularly with critical stuff involved. As ever with Wikipedia, fix anything that is undoubtedly wrong, and add whatever else is right, and try not to think too harshly of me for having left it so long in its weak state. Geogre 03:23, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC) (Usually working on 18th c. material.)

I just did the best I could on short notice, having just read the novel for college. I don't find my work totally satisfactory, so edit it however you like. I re-worked the section on plot and expanded it--it's incomplete but it shouldn't be too much longer, I don't think. I declined to do anything other than plot summary, because my opinions or analyses of the novel aren't encyclopedic and I don't feel like summarizing any sort of critical work done on the novel. Rufusgriffin 01:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

What's interesting is that I'm nearly the opposite. I've read and taught the novel and gone through the secondaries, but the plot escapes me, while the criticism remains. :-) Thanks for the fixes. "Short notice" is how everything has been going with this article. I wrote the bulk of it in a day because someone wrote a substub saying, "Wise Blood is a novel by Flannery O'Connor." Well, I should have deleted it. It was a perfect CSD candidate for "empty," but I wrote the article on the spur and on the spot, as the options were leaving a hideous substub or going off half-cocked. I went off half-cocked, and I'm glad of anyone who fixes the squibs I fired, way back when. Geogre 02:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

TSE and Flannery O

I had to trim those three sentences on The Wasteland and Wise Blood, and here is why. They had read that the two are "frequently compared" and that Wise Blood is derivative. Well, compared by whom? There is a thematic relationship between the two, but it is merely thematic. There is no "narrative" debt, certainly, as, first of all, The Wasteland is not a narrative. Secondly, The Wasteland can be read as Christian by people who know that TSE was about to convert, but the poem is most definitely not a Christian poem. Without a citation, and a darned specific one, there is no way to insert something like "is frequently compared," and without some very, very heavy artillery in the citations, saying that there is any actual debt to TSE's poem by Wise Blood is outrageous. It's easy enough to see in the two works similar themes, and it's quite possible to see other TSE poems at play (notably Ash Wednesday and its version of Dante's vision of the beatific rose through blindness), but The Wasteland and Wise Blood only share a narrative element of setting, at most. Flannery O'Connor's south is not world weary trans-Europe or enervate fashionable society, and no one goes to India in her book. The severe Christianity of her ascetics is something Eliot's persona dreams of; hers show that it's as big a mistake as the "worship of no god" in Choruses from "The Rock." If there are references to prove these statements, please provide them. Geogre 01:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup Tag

I put a cleanup tag because it seems that the article just has a lot of wierd wording in it. Much of the article is not entirely grammatically correct. I'm terrible with grammar, so I don't think that you want me to edit it. It's difficult to explain, but a lot of the article seems to just be akwardly written. I'll try to provide more explanation if you need it, but I caught wierd grammar on my first pass through. Cliffhanger407 15:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

That's most peculiar. I actually teach grammar, in real life. I won't dispute your impressions, and I could have missed something in the edits, but as I wrote it originally it was unlikely to have outright grammatical flaws. Geogre 15:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I cleaned a little, but I left the tag up because I'm sure it could use more. Rufusgriffin 22:42, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Infobox

Hey, I added an infobox and a picture. I think I did everything correct about fair-use of images, but if not, just tell me so I know what I did wrong.

I also put the sections in an order that made a bit more sense, so plot comes before themes and so on.

Caesar 19:46, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Bob Dylan's "High Water (For Charley Patton)"

In regards to the section about Bob Dylan referencing Asa Hawks, the lines "Well, the cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies" is from a British folk song, or at least the Jack Elliot version featured on the Derroll Adams tribute album Banjoman. The song and Jack Elliot predate the Bob Dylan song although the recording I am familiar with comes later. Somebody with more knowledge on the subject should probably look into that since it seems like the information in the article may be wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Elsporko (talk • contribs) 06:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I concur. I was unaware that it was known in England, but the song is certainly traditional in Appalachia. As the previous poster said, it's the first line that's from the traditional version; the second is Dylan's. --Laughingrat, 03/27/09 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.60.227.163 (talk) 23:07, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

A question about plot summary

The plot summary for this article seems quite long. Is that standard for lit articles, and if not, does anyone have a problem with me doing some SERIOUS paring down of it? The current state of the article isn't that great, and paring down the plot summary might be a good start to improving the overall quality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lithistman (talk • contribs) 01:54, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Good grief, agree with above, the plot summary is not so much a summary as it *is* the plot. --Reklawpj (talk) 12:47, 31 July 2014 (UTC)