In Wise Blood, Flannery O'Conner creates a spiritually empty world in which her characters attempt to live without morals or religion. Hazel Motes, the protagonist, creates the Christless Church to escape organized religion. In her novel, Flannery O'Conner explores humanity's need for spiritual truth and purpose. She uses Hazel Motes, Enoch Emery, Asa Hawks and Mrs. Flood to demonstrate that man cannot find spiritual fulfillment in material prosperity, but only through redemption through Christ. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay O'Conner illustrates Christ's redemption of humanity through Hazel Motes. She describes Hazel as a “Christian despite himself” (a Christian in spite of himself) (Kreyling 71). At twelve years old, Haze believed he was destined to become a preacher just like his father, but quickly abandoned his Christian faith. He becomes convinced that he has no soul and establishes the Christless Church to preach a new Jesus. However, he is not the only one to fight against religion; in fact, all of O'Conner's characters exhibit a misdirected sense of spiritual purpose, if at all. He also shares feelings of loneliness and displacement with other characters. As he returns home from the army, he finds his family missing with only a "shell...a skeleton" of the home left behind (O'Conner 20). Asa and Sabbath Hawks are also familiar with the feeling of displacement, having spent most of their lives moving from place to place as beggars. Such widespread unrest and dissatisfaction suggests that there is a common search for something greater. Hazel Motes tries to satisfy her emptiness with material possessions. This becomes explicit when he buys an old Essex. He notes that the car will be “mostly…a house since he “has no place to be” (O’Conner 69). Hazel tries to relieve her sense of displacement with the car, but it quickly becomes more than just a house. He boasts that his car can always take him "where he wanted to be" and believes that owning a car makes him a free individual (O'Conner 186). Essex becomes the rock on which Hazel builds her church, both literally and figuratively. He was preaching the gospel of a false Jesus of his own invention on the vehicle, and this symbolically represents his denial of Christ. He begins to have misguided trust in his car and his new religion, believing that they give him the freedom to live his life the way he wants. His life reflects his new attitude; he uses the car to murder a man by running him over. He continues to rely on his car as a source of freedom, even after a mechanical breakdown. Only after receiving free intervention from an attendant does the car start moving again. Instead of turning away from false beliefs with gratitude, undeserved kindness only further provokes one's arrogance. “He murmurs to himself, “'I don't need any favors from him'” (O'Conner 124). It is only when he rolls down an embankment that he realizes his error and the uselessness of his false religion as a mere incarnation of those who reject the true God. Hazel begins to turn away from her condition once her car is destroyed. Looking at sin "far away...from his eyes to the empty gray sky that extends into space," he experiences God's presence in the world so powerfully that he ceases to resist what he was fleeing. all his life: the grace of Christ (O'Conner 211). After receiving the revelation of a new spiritual freedom in Christ, Hazel blinds herself and binds herself with barbed wire to cut herself off frommaterial world and deepen this freedom. The author also uses Enoch Emery to show that spiritual happiness cannot be found. apart from the salvation of Christ. He strives to make something great of himself and is drawn to Hazel Motes' Jesus in anticipation of becoming a new man. In order to gain Hazel's favor, Emory steals a corpse from the museum to present it as the new Jesus. Sabbath Hawks cradles the fake Jesus in his arms, and the whole event becomes a grotesque parody of Jesus' birth in the manger. In the Christless Church religion, the Virgin Mary is a fifteen-year-old whore, the father is Hazel Motes himself, and the baby Jesus is the corpse dwarf. His efforts to accomplish his superficial goals are simply pathetic. When he sees Gonga, the Hollywood star, he is inspired again and fantasizes about the day when he too "will have people waiting to shake his hand" (O'Conner 178). However, in order to make his dream come true, he steals Gonga's gorilla costume and pretends to be him. This reflects the American tendency to solve a problem by changing only the appearance. Instead of becoming a new and improved self, he completely loses his identity in the monkey suit and his search for fulfillment through superficial means is ultimately a disaster. Flannery O'Conner demonstrates humanity's need for Christ through the life of Asa Hawks. Hawks is a former preacher who ten years ago swore to blind himself to prove his faith in Jesus Christ. However, his courage failed him and he feigned his blindness. Now he pretends to be blind, attracting sympathy from others while begging for money. Although he once had good spiritual intentions, he lost his purpose. Today, he lives his life feigning blindness to beg on street corners. Ironically, despite his own spiritual depravity, he provides insight into Hazel's spiritual state. He said to him, “Listen, my boy… you can’t run away from Jesus. Jesus is a fact’” (O’Conner 47). This shows that all humanity does indeed need Jesus and that he is a reality from which no one can escape. Indeed, Hazel Motes comes to recognize the need for Christ in her life and becomes the first to abandon the foolish search for something greater. The author uses Mrs. Flood to make it clear that no one can find spiritual prosperity in material wealth, but through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Mrs. Flood, Hazel's landowner, strives for fulfillment in material possessions. The self-centered woman plans to marry Hazel so that when he dies, she can collect the pension he receives from the government. After all, she never benefited from the taxes she paid year after year. She is bitter knowing that everything she paid went to help those who never deserved help. This only goes to show how greedy and self-centered she is. When Hazel dies before she can see her plan come to fruition, she feels financially cheated. However, she suspects that Hazel knew something that she didn't and that she was also deceived for something that is not material in nature. Flood is always a person who takes life literally. Unable to look beyond literal sight, she wonders why Hazel blinded herself and walked with stones in her shoes. Now her strange self-harming actions have a positive effect on her, forcing her to search into the spiritual dimensions she would rather avoid. As she looks Motes in the eyes and closes her eyes, she sees a light in the distance and realizes that she has arrived "at the beginning of something she could not begin" (O'Conner 236). This last chapter suggests,.