Wise Blood, Chapter 3

Chapter three’s theme is faces. I counted at least five different faces that are descibed throughout this section. Here we are symbolism of a potato (brown, dirty) being peeled (white, pure) but one must question if that potato is really clean or if it is the same darn vegetable. Religion, Jesus, is the actual potato peeler. The soul is the potato. This is also the first time that Enoch Emery is introduced in the text. Looking back at the book after having read it in its entirety, I now see that Sabbith Hawks makes her debut simultaniously with Enoch. The way she is handing out leaftlets and accompying her father, the way she is dressed, her facial features…it all reminds me of how I envision the early days of French singer Edith Piaf…the Little Sparrow. It is interesting to me that the crowd gathers just like Jesus attracted crowds although the potato peeler is anything but a Jesus lover. Here we get a description of Enoch, were he came from, and what happened to him as a boy. At first I thought he was an African-American boy because his father traded him, but I was wrong. It seems odd to me that white children were being traded to keep middle aged women happy…perhaps the woman he was staying with was trying to do good in the world. Her being so strick on Enoch was her equivalent of Haze’s desired to wear rocks in his shoes for all the sinning he had done. Enoch is obsees with dirt and disorder, yet he is dirty and disorderly himself. His attire is offwhite. He describes the woman he lived with as, “This woman was hard to get along with-she wasn’t old. I reckon she was forty year old-but she so was ugly. She had theseyer brown glasses and her hair was so thin it looke dlike gravy trickling iver her skull.” Obviously, this character is walks slightly on the rude side…although I love the gravy imagery. We also meet Asa Hawks. There is symbolism in his name, for hawks are keen hunters due to their outstanding sight. He is supposed to be a blind preacher, but as we find out later, he is not blind at all. In this chapter he says, “I can see more than you! You got eyes and see not, ears and hear not, but you’ll have to see some time.” Knowing what I know now, this is a case of double irony. Later the crowd leaves and it is writen as, “ It was like a large spread raveling and the separate threads disappeared down the dark streets,” which to me was symbolic of souls and their unravelings. Enoch, like Hazel, only wants a friend and makes every effort to hang out with Haze. Haze, however, doesn’t genuinely like Enoch and is much more obessed with the Hawkes. Haze has a flashback of when he was ten and saw his first naked woman and the shame he felt. His mother could sense what was happening, and young Haze was a smartass by remarking that he never asked Jesus to die for his sins. The woman he saw reminds me of Marilyn Monroe with O’Connor’s inclusion of the mole on her lip. Furthermore, we are now well aware the Haze looks for signs although he tried hard not to have spiritual beliefs.