The Mote in Your Brother's Eye

Flannery O'Connor's great novel, Wise Blood,is not only a fantastic psychological study of religion, but a fantastic study of hypocrisy in religion as well. Through the character Hazel Motes, O'Connor exposes her readers to a hypocritical society that not only places an indelible mark on Motes (becoming, arguably, the catalyst for his resentment of religion throughout the book), but also confronts those readers with the challenge of examining their own hypocritical scars as well.

The first real sign of hypocrisy in the novel, regarding religious principles, takes place when Hazel's father takes him to a carnival, sending the young boy to one tent while he goes to a nudie show at another. Though it is assumed that Hazel's father is supposedly somewhat religious, as his own father was a preacher, the man proves weak in the area of peep shows. It can't be said that he didn't know what he was getting into, either, as the man advertising outside the tent is fairly explicit in his calling. O'Connor writes, "He didn't say what was inside. He said it was so SINsational that it would cost any man that wanted to see it thirty-five cents, and it was so EXclusive, only fifteen could get in at a time. His father sent him to a tent where two monkeys danced, and then he made for it" (60-61). Once his father is safely inside, Hazel makes his own way in, lying about his age and paying a lesser fee because he comes in later. When he sees what's going on inside, he becomes ashamed and leaves, punishing himself the next day by walking through the woods with stones in his shoes. It is quite possible that seeing his father, one whom Hazel would have looked to as a religious role model, doing something so obviously against his supposed beliefs (something Hazel actually was hit for by his mother for seeing), became a decisive factor in his future resentment of religion.

Another example of hypocrisy in the work, this one taking place after Hazel seems to have given up his faith entirely, comes when a sixteen-year-old boy asks Hazel to go to a whorehouse with him. After they go in and come out again, Hazel asks the boy if he wants to join his Church Without Christ. O'Connor writes, regarding his reply, "The boy said he was sorry but he couldn't be a member of that church because he was a Lapsed Catholic. He said that what they had just done was a mortal sin, and that should they die unrepentant of it they would suffer eternal punishment and never see God" (147). Here the hypocrisy is revealed when the boy makes it known that he can't join Hazel's church because he is a Catholic. Yet, Catholics, by their religious principles, are not supposed to be going to whorehouses. The hypocrisy goes deeper later on, when O'Connor writes, "Haze had not enjoyed the whorehouse anywhere near as much as the boy had and he had wasted half his evening. He shouted that there was no such thing as sin or judgment, but the boy only shook his head and asked him if he would like to go again the next night" (147). Hazel, believing there is "no such thing as sin or judgment," is guiltless of hypocrisy for his attending the brothel, whereas the Catholic boy, who believes in sin and judgment, not only still attends the whorehouse but also actually asks Hazel "if he would like to go again the next night." This is the type of hypocrisy that Hazel is reacting against throughout the novel, the hypocrisy of a society that claims to believe so strongly in something and yet doesn't think twice about ignoring those principles and doing the opposite.

This purposeful reaction against hypocrisy in religion by adhering to no religion at all seems to be supported by Hazel himself, when after running over the man pretending to be him with his car, he addresses the dying man, saying, "'Two things I can't stand...a man that ain't true and one that mocks what is'" (204). Hazel couldn't state his stand on the issue of hypocrisy more directly - he can't stand a man who isn't "true" (a hypocrite), and he can't stand a man who "mocks what is" true (a hypocrite in the sense that he pretends to care enough about an opposing truth to mock the real truth, when in fact he simply mocks the truth for some other purpose - in this case, the man mocked Hazel's truth for monetary gain).

Hazel confirms his stand against this hypocrisy by solidifying his sincerity. Unlike Asa, who had intended to blind himself but couldn't do it (113-114), Hazel intends to, and follows through with, his own blinding. As O'Connor writes, of his landlord's evidence for Hazel's blinding himself, "She had got one long good look and it had been enough to tell her he had done what he'd said he was going to do" (215). Whereas Asa said he would blind himself, but couldn't do it when the time came, Hazel says he will blind himself and does. He is no hypocrite - what he says he will do, he will do; what he says he believes, or doesn't believe - he either believes, or doesn't.

Probably the strongest catalyst for Hazel's behavior in terms of hypocrisy in religion comes from the source itself, Jesus Christ, who Hazel seems to see as the biggest hypocrite of them all. He even says to Asa at one point, "'If Jesus cured blind men, how come you don't get him to cure you'" (111)? It seems to Hazel that if Jesus were a fair and just God, how could it be okay for him to cure some people of their blindness, yet let others suffer? The biggest evidence for Christ's seeming hypocrisy is the doctrine of sin and redemption itself, the foundation upon which the Christian church is built. Here you have a God that tells you on the one hand not to sin, yet who, without our sin, would be irrelevant. The importance of Christ is dependant upon His offer of forgiveness for our sins, therefore his importance necessitates that sin which He so ardently condemns us for committing.

Hazel's problem with this doctrine is revealed in many places throughout the book. One of the first of these places is at the point where he first meets Asa, and states, "'If I was in sin I was in it before I ever commited any...I don't believe in sin'" (53). Here Hazel makes known his distrust of Christ's doctrine of sin, in effect saying that if he's ever sinned it's because Christ needed him to sin so that Christ Himself would be needed. By saying he doesn't believe in sin, Hazel is making Christ and His forgiveness unnecessary, questioning His very existence. He further questions His existence later on, in an ice cream parlor with Enoch when he tells the waitress, "'I AM clean...If Jesus existed, I wouldn't be clean'" (91). By stating he wouldn't be clean if Jesus existed, just after stating he is, in fact, clean, Hazel is saying Jesus doesn't exist. This goes back to the doctrine of sin and redemption (forgiveness of sin) because it is sin that makes one unclean, and only when one is unclean (in sin), does one need Christ. By saying he is clean, Hazel is again implying that sin does not exist, and that, in turn, there is no need for Christ, whether He exists or not.

Wise Blood is one of the few truly honest depictions of a true struggle with religion one can read in modern fiction. The situations Hazel is put in throughout the novel, the characters he encounters, and his reactions to them all should give the reader pause, and cause them to reflect on the state of their own belief system. O'Connor's novel, if nothing else, begs the question of the reader, Do I really believe what I say I believe? If so, do I act like it? These are the types of questions Hazel asks himself which lead to his renunciation of faith, held in such low regard by those who claim to be proponents of it. His father, the sixteen year old boy, Asa, Hoover Shoats, and even Sabbath Lilly, who didn't care which church she belonged to as long as they allowed bastards into Heaven, are all hypocrites of one type or another, and Hazel's fear of becoming the same leads him to do his best to avoid his faith altogether. Whether he succeeded, or failed, is a question open to the interpretation of the reader.

Source:

O'Connor, Flannery. Wise Blood. 1952. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967.