Enoch Emery In Huston's Wise Blood

Dan Shor as Enoch Emery

    Wise Blood is a story with many weird characters with their own unique personality traits. But a character who made me question what I was watching was Enoch Emery. Enoch seems like a kind-hearted, lonely 18-year-old with no real direction, but there are definitely things Enoch does that the typical 18-year-old doesn't do—especially stealing a "new Jesus" from a museum. According to Susan Pressley, "Most readers are disgusted as they read about Enoch's stealing the mummy from the museum, housing it in his self-made tabernacle, and ultimately delivering it to Hazel to serve as the "new Jesus" (80) that Hazel seeks. Critics focus on this act as more evidence that Enoch is a pagan who has found a God in his own mummified and unresurrected image" (Pressley 373). "Confused" would probably be a better word than "disgusted" but the disturbing actions make sense if Enoch has realized his own spirituality. When we first meet Enoch, he is consistently following Hazel around because he has no one. Similar to Hazel, Enoch is lost in life. As the movie goes on, the more we (the audience) see Enoch's individuality (no matter how weird it is). Do we see this shift because he "found God in his own mummified and unresurrected image?" The movie doesn't make that clear, but Pressley makes a great point when she mentions the following: "Enoch is an activist who visualizes Hazel's object of desire and seeks to find it" (Pressley 374). Enoch is pretty much a follower of Hazel and his new "Church of Christ Without Christ." But it seems that he comes to this spiritual realization quicker than Hazel does, which intrigues me to finish the story and movie on my own time. Although, as a class, we haven't finished the movie or read the book, I wonder how Enoch's story will end. How will Enoch further convey his spirituality? Will Enoch get a happy ending? Honestly, however, I wonder how much bigger a role Enoch plays in the book; Dr. Ruzich mentioned in class that Enoch plays a bigger role in the book and a smaller one in the movie, which makes me wonder about the differences between O'Connor's literature version and Huston's film version.


Works Cited 

Pressley, Susan. The Wise Blood of Enoch Emery - Georgia College & State University. https://kb.gcsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1083&context=thecorinthian. 

Comments

  1. Paige JFebruary 8, 2023 at 8:33 PM

    Robert!
    I really like what you've said here. This whole idea kind of reminds me of Jesus and the 12 Apostles. None of them truly had direction, much like Enoch. Most of the Apostles clung to Jesus and his teachings because it gave them hope for salvation. Enoch breaks into a museum just to find a 'new Jesus' and please Hazel. This all just seems like idolation to me. I think it would be interesting to see how different my interpretation would be if I read Enoch in the book. Regardless I think the choice to make him so submissive was a fantastic one.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The River" and its Characters' Resemblance to Divinity

Image
  In "The River" by Flannery O'Connor, we follow the events of Harry Ashfield who is a young man with a deep faith. Faith and religion are two reoccurring themes throughout "The River" but what particularly interested me was the comparison O'Connor creates between her characters and religious/divine figures. First, O'Connor finds a way to compare or parallel Mr. Connin to Jesus Christ. When we first meet Mr. Connin, Mrs. Connin introduces her mister from afar: "Bevel turned from Mr. Connin to a colored picture over the bed of a man wearing a white sheet. He had long hair and a gold circle around his head and he was sawing on a board while some children stood watching him" (O'Connor 171). Here, O'Connor writes in such an ambiguous way that, initially, I was unsure if the description was of a stained glass portrait of Jesus or of Mr. Connin. I love how O'Connor described Mr. Connin so similarly to images of Jesus to represent that Mr.
Read more

O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" and Classism by Bobby Bradley

Image
Robert Bradley Dr. Ruzich English Studies Seminar Capstone 16 January 2023 Blog Post 2: O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" and Classism In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor, classism is a highly evident and essential theme expressed through the story’s characters. At the beginning of O’Connor’s short story, O’Connor’s description of the grandmother’s clothing gives audiences an idea of the “old lady’s” class status with the following excerpt: “Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her head on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O’Connor 131). The vivid description O’Connor gives of the grandmother’s clothes shows that the grandmother holds herself to a higher standard and shows she dresses to show others of that high standard. Also, the grandmother dressing nicely for the vacati
Read more

O'Connor's "Parker's Back" and Dissatisfaction

Image
     In "Parker's Back" by Flannery O'Connor, a theme of Parker's story is one of dissatisfaction. Parker seems to be dissatisfied with life and, according to Alfred Corn in his essay "An Encounter With O'Connor and 'Parker's Back,'" Parker finds a way to deal with his dissatisfaction: "And yet he is dissatisfied, troubled, and given to a peculiar addiction. He likes to acquire tattoos" (Corn 11). Here, we see that Corn believes Parker's dissatisfaction in life has made him give in to the addiction of getting tattoos. Nonetheless, we see numerous examples of Parker being dissatisfied in the text.      First, we see Parker is dissatisfied with life when discussing how he is satisfied with his tattoos for "about a month" before losing that interest: "A huge dissatisfaction would come over him and he would go off and find another tattooist and have another space filled up" (O'Connor 518). Later, O'C
Read more