Wise Blood, Chapter 1

The first thing I noticed about Flannery O’Connor in chapter one is that this author loves to use color. Each page is peppered with different words of colors. This is the first time that we meet the main character, Hazel Motes. I ask “What does his name mean?” Apparently most scholars associate his name with his hazy religious perspective. I, however, associate his name with the color we describe as “hazel.” What is hazel? It is a color in between colors. It isn’t white, black, brown, green, or blue, but rather a mixture. I guess it leads back to what the scholars were saying! The introductory paragraph leads me to think that Hazel Motes is a desperate man-child. When the train is rolling by I questioned if O’Connor was intentionally dropping the idea of suicide or not. Mrs. Wally B Hitchcock is annoying, and I hope that her physical description is not a mirroring of my own in the years to come. I hope my legs are not short and pudgy and dangle to reach the ground when sitting on a seat. I hope my face is not flushed and pink. I pray that I do not annoy the hell out of people by my nosy nature! She uses the price tag of Hazel’s blazer to try to identify him…which lends support to the idea that impressions and the way one is dressed is significant in placing a person when one undergoes natural assessment by another individual. Writing this long after I have finished the book, I have noticed that O’Connor has themes in each chapter. Chapter one I believe to be about eyes; Hazel’s, Mrs. Hitchcock’s, the porter’s. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to like Hazel or not right off the bat. He most certainly annoys the heck out of the porter. If the porter doesn’t want to claim Eastrod, don’t make him! Who cares? Moreover, was Hazel or the porter correct? Where was the porter really from? O’Connor has no problem using the word “nigger” in her literature, but then again it is literature! The three women that he meets in the dining hall seem to annoy Hazel. O’Connor mentions their “poisonous” Eastern accents and compares them to parrots. I simply think that Hazel is easily upset and angered. He is constantly losing his cool. What are spotted eggs? Was a plate with spotted eggs washed down with coffee and expensive meal?
We learn about Hazel’s upbringing. He has been gone in the army for four years now and is going back to his hometown. The town and the inhabitants that he left are long gone by the time he arrives home. He left when he was eighteen years old so that must put him around twenty-two years old at this point. It is hard to imagine that he’s just a year older than I am in this book. He seems so old, yet so naïve! It’s the saddest forecast if I have ever seen one! He was raised in a family who’s patriarch was a brimstone and fire preacher who despised young Hazel for he was a spitting image of him, the grandfather. He preached and used Hazel as an example. If God can love that boy, anybody is worthy of God’s love. I find it interetsing that the only thing that Hazel has read is the Bible. Knowing that Hazel rebels against the religious state-of-mind into which he was involuntarily ploped down into, I ask myself “Isn’t this common? Usually don’t people who were forced into a particular believ rebel with a vengence?” Hazel’s behavior thus far is not shocking to me.
It is obvious that he didn’t bond well with his comrades in the army. They attended brothels while he clinged to his Bible and his mother’s silver-rimmed glasses. He was lonely in the service, but he brought the loneliness from home. The isolation is compounded when he arrives back to his home town and nobody he knew was there. He finds his mother’s chifforobe and is surprise to see that nobody has stolen it. He leaves a note in the event that anyone has thoughts about stealing it. It appears that Hazel will stay, but almost immediately he leaves. Hazel is an individual that thinks and acts on impulses as we find out later in the book with the purchase of a car and the decision to move to a new city.