Apocryphal Textual Commentary in O’Connor’s Wise Blood
The Watchers can be largely identified because they possess certain universal fallen angel traits: an abundance of any of the cardinal sins, an awareness of the existance of God but the open rejection of such faith, no hope for redemption, an inability to “go home again,” a skewed view of the relationship between God and God’s creations, and a marked dislike for the messengers of God.
Hazel’s introduction to the porter while on the train is perhaps one of the most significant encounters with a Watcher, as the dialogue and exchange between the two signals to the reader that there is perhaps more going on than meets the eye. The porter is, in fact, a Watcher, and one of the first that Hazel encounters on his trip to and through hell. Hazel recognizes the porter as a man from Eastrod, and identifies him as such, stating that he knows the porter’s father. The porter vehemently denies this, rejecting his father and news of his father to maintain his pride.
Hazel informs the porter that his father, Cash Parrum, is dead and tells him that “you can’t go back there neither, nor anybody else, not if they wanted to” (18). Hazel informs the porter of his fate and status as a condemned Watcher and signals to him that he will never be able to return to his previous home in heaven (Eastrod), but the porter does not wish to hear this and reacts violently to having this information pushed upon him.
After Hazel begins to feel trapped in the coffin of the porter’s creation, he looks out of his berth to see “the porter at the other end of the car, a white shape in the darkness, standing there watching him and not moving” (27). This passage futher demonstrates the porter’s Watcher status, the depiction of which culminates when Hazel calls out to the porter for help, and he “stood watching him and didn’t move” and then comments, in a “sour triumphant voice” that “Jesus been a long time gone” (27). The porter understands the state of affairs in the world, and he takes a certain pride in seeing Hazel struggle with his memories and dreams, only to tear away Hazel’s hope for salvation when human (or, in this case, fallen angel) kindness fails him.
Lily is one of the easier characters to define according to her role, as she reveals her skewed perception of religion and God with the stories she tells, seemingly detests Enoch, embraces the new Jesus (while rejecting the old), is lustful, slothful and greedy, and actively tries to lure Hazel away from his pursuit of Jesus (and ultimately his redemption).
Asa Hawkes (perhaps my least favorite character in the novel, for any number of reasons), while showing no particular disdain for Enoch, shows nothing but dislike for God, making his living mocking exactly that which Christianity stands for. He is a man unredeemed who resents his creator for what he believes to be abandonment, though we know from his newspaper clippings that it was Asa who failed God by making a promise of loyal devotion, only to rescind it due to cowardice.
Slade himself deals in treachery; he makes his living by selling flawed merchandise to the vulnerable or desperate. His son has some sort of spiritual Tourette’s, wherein he spends the majority of his appearance in the novel cursing for what appears to be no reason at all. Here we see an example of the sins of the father being passed onto the son; Slade’s son has inherited this sort of ungodliness, but unlike his father, he does not have the years of experience in sublimating this into something more socially acceptable (like selling used cars).
From an Apocryphal reading of the novel, if Slade is a Watcher, then his son would be one of the giants who voraciously consumes mankind and perpetuates the evil at work in the world; we see this reflected in the text with the boy’s uncontrollable blasphemy, pushed forth upon the world through no real doing of his own, but rather because this is the legacy which has been passed on to him.
Solace Layfield has become a Prophet because he doesn’t fancy the idea of any other type of work, and his slothfulness has created in him a willingness to sacrifice spirituality for an easy dollar. While one could argue that Hoover Shoats is responsible for Layfield’s undoing, this is the case with the fallen angels, and the manner in which the vast majority were lead astray.
Hazel holds Layfield accountable for his own transgressions, however, for bearing false witness against God and cashing in his faith for an easy source of income, and this is what kills Layfield, as Haze runs him down and “the Essex stood half over the other Prophet as if it were pleased to guard what it has finally brought down” while Hazel leans down to take the Watcher’s last confession. Layfield cries out for Jesus, but his confession is incomplete, for while he admits that he “never told the truth to [his] daddy,” he fails to atone for his part in the rebellion against the holy.
In addition to the more significant Watcher characters within the novel, there are several others who push Hazel along or attempt to force him into accepting his fate and completely abandoning God (or, as the case may be, the messengers of God). The one thing that both the man in the gorilla suit and the waitress have in common is their profound dislike for Enoch, who is presented in the course of the novel as a messenger of God. When Enoch dotes upon the gorilla as he does Hazel, the man within the gorilla suit tells him plainly to “go to hell,” and Enoch runs off, terrified and determined to undo this creature, whose existence is a counterpoint to his own.
The waitress repeatedly declares her dislike for Enoch, but when she meets Hazel, she flirts with him, attempting to convince him to cast Enoch aside and spend time with her (the reader also sees the same trend with Sabbath Lily and her dislike for Enoch, for “godliness is an abomination to a sinner”). The woman on the train at the beginning of novel shows both her vanity and her disinterest in religion when she suggest to Hazel that he does not have to believe in God; she also immediately identifies him as a resident of Hell, even when he himself does not understand this.
Leora Watts sets out to seduce Hazel (though she really doesn’t work too hard at it) and is eager to seduce him, perhaps even moreso because he looks like a preacher; her ultimate desire is to corrupt him and snatch another individual away from God’s grace.
Wise Blood, ultimately, is an incredibly bleak novel peopled with no short number of completely unpleasant creatures who have no interest whatsoever in doing anything other than ruining the destiny of humanity (and the rest of Watcher-kind). While Wise Blood, then, is not a story about humans, it remains a novel about humanity, because at the end, the reader sees a narrative shift meant to indicate to the audience that this story, all along, has been about what the Watchers have done to humanity and the need for mankind to accept a life in God or else be tainted and damned with the fallen angels.
