Wise Blood: Dramatic Irony 4 key examples

When Enoch pursues Hazel in the third chapter, he begins to tell his life story. Several times in this chapter, he repeats multiple times that he's only been in Taulkinham for two months. He has mixed feelings about this milestone. On the one hand, it's a point of pride: "I ain't been here but two months and I already work for the city." On the other hand, it underlines his loneliness: "I been here two months and I don't know nobody." Given that Enoch has emphasized multiple times that he's new to the city, it surprises the reader when he tells a policeman they briefly interact with that he was "born and raised here" and that this is his "ol' home town." Even if it's more likely that he's lying to the policeman than to Hazel, this blatant lie indicates—both to Hazel and the reader—that Enoch has no qualms about stretching the truth to his needs.

In the same chapter, Hazel also proves unwilling to share the truth of his background, which again brings about an instance of dramatic irony. In this case, Enoch is the one to be kept in the dark. While Hazel doesn't directly lie to Enoch about where he comes from, he refrains from admitting that Enoch is close to guessing where he comes from. 

Almost right away in the first chapter, the reader learns that Hazel is from a town called Eastrod. As in Enoch's case, O'Connor makes sure to repeat this information multiple times. Hazel is certain that the train porter comes from the same town as him, so he tells the porter several times where he was raised. In one of these lines, he specifies that Eastrod is "near Melsy." Because Melsy is the "nearest railroad stop to Eastrod, the first thing Hazel did after being released by the was buy to a train ticket there.

After O'Connor hammers in this information about Hazel's origins in the exposition, it catches the readers attention when Hazel denies any affiliation to Melsy in the third chapter. Enoch is sure that he's seen Hazel "sommers before," and throws a few towns out there to figure out where they may have crossed paths.

"You ain’t from Stockwell, are you?”

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“No.”

“Melsy?”

“No.”

Although Hazel isn't fully lying when he answers in the negative about being from Melsy, the reader knows that Enoch is on the brink of guessing where Hazel is from. In this moment, it's clear that Enoch is desperate for a familiar face and a friend. By denying Enoch the pleasure of almost being right, Hazel rejects this potential friendship and indicates to the reader that he doesn't want anything to do with Enoch. The dramatic irony increases the distance between the two young men, and moreover shows that both of them are flippant about the truth. Neither of them are completely open about where they come from, and both of them suffer from a sense of unbelonging.

At the very end of Chapter 4, the reader already begins to sense that the action will rise in the following chapter—and that it will have something to do with an interaction between Hazel and Enoch. This is because Hazel asks another driver where the zoo is and says “I got to see a boy that works in it." Earlier in the novel, Enoch told Hazel that he works at the zoo.

In the opening of the fifth chapter, the narrator builds on the foreshadowing from the end of Chapter 4:

That morning Enoch Emery knew when he woke up that today the person he could show it to was going to come. He knew by his blood. He had wise blood like his daddy.

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The opening of the chapter is marked by both dramatic irony and foreshadowing. Although Enoch doesn't yet seem to know who "the person" he's waiting for is, the reader knows that this person is Hazel Motes. The repetition of the word "knew" and the dramatic tone of these sentences signals that whatever comes of their interaction will be significant to the overall plot development.

As the chapter proceeds, the foreshadowing continues. While remaining in the third person, the narration closely follows Enoch's perspective. He's fixated on an unspecified mystery, and he's urgently waiting for a "special person" whom he can show it to: "He knew he would know him when he saw him and he knew that he would have to see him soon or the nerve inside him would grow so big that he would be forced to steal a car or rob a bank or jump out of a dark alley onto a woman."

While the reader doesn't yet know what Enoch's mystery is, the reader does know who the special person is. The interplay between the previous chapter and this chapter makes it quite clear that the reader will discover the form and contents of this mystery at the same time as Hazel.

Over the course of the chapter, the narrator repeatedly refers to Enoch's "wise blood," or instinct. Enoch seems to have gotten this expression from his father. He has a mixed relationship to his wise blood: on the one hand he wants to resist it, on the other hand he believes he can't help but go along with what it tells him to do. Moreover, he sees his wise blood as dangerous, as it tends to drag him into trouble: "it’s always something against the law." Enoch seems to understand his life in terms of destiny and inevitability, and he doesn't seem to believe he has much free will. By choosing the title Wise Blood, O'Connor underlines that the novel is about the torture of faith and instinct. The title also seems to mock Enoch, since he isn't particularly wise.

As the chapter proceeds, the reader becomes more and more certain that Enoch's mystery will influence the rest of the novel—and that this influence will bring the characters into dark or dangerous territory. O'Connor picks this foreshadowing back up later in the novel, when Enoch becomes sure that "the thing that was going to happen to him has started to happen."

The final sentence in the passage contributes valuable characterization. Although Hazel hasn't so far given the impression of being a likable character, his critical reticence has made it seem as though he's astute—especially because the reader encounters him alongside the talkative and foolish Enoch. When Hazel acquires his car, however, O'Connor begins to take this impression apart.

It's evident to the reader that the mechanic's statements about the car, his own skill, and his shop are hyperbole. All of these statements are so extreme that there's no doubt that he's lying in order to keep Hazel as a customer. When Hazel proves willing to trust these statements, the reader gains telling insight into his psyche. Hazel left the other mechanic because he told him something he didn't want to hear. He's content with this mechanic, on the other hand, because he tells Hazel what he wants to hear. 

Hazel's ironic claims about his car continue as it continues to break down. In Chapter 7, he's once again forced to go to a garage. Even if the man who helps him this time, a one-armed man, remains silent, Hazel defensively insists that it's a "good car" and that it will take him "anywhere" he wants to go. To boost his ego, but perhaps also to mock him a little, Sabbath Hawks echoes this opinion with a simile: “It’s a grand auto [...] It goes as smooth as honey.” 

Hazel's ironic certainty that the car is top-notch shows that, while he may seem much smarter than Enoch because of his brooding demeanor, he's just his own brand of foolish. Hazel thinks he's uncovered the truth, but he's constantly lying to himself. Because he sees the car a sort of extension of himself, he's unreceptive to opinions that run contrary to his ideas and plans. Given that he makes the car both his home and his escape from his surroundings, his unwillingness to listen to the honest mechanic sets him up for vulnerability later on. When the car meets its demise toward the end of the novel, he does as well.

In Chapter 6, Hazel knocks on Hawks's door to tell him that he's moved into the same building. After a brief and unfriendly interaction, Hawks shuts the door in Hazel's face. Since the third-person narrator has access to the scene behind the closed door, the reader is privy to what comes next:

Inside, Hawks took off his dark glasses and, from a hole in the window shade, watched him get in his car and drive off. The eye he put to the hole was slightly rounder and smaller than his other one, but it was obvious he could see out of both of them.

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The image of Hawks removing his dark glasses after closing the door is analogous to that of an actor removing their costume after going backstage. Through this moment, O'Connor reveals that Hawks is merely playing the role of a blind preacher. The dramatic irony causes some problems for Hawks, as he's forced to always put on his glasses before he interacts with Hazel. In once instance, he just "barely [gets] the black glasses on in time" before Hazel walks through their door. As a result, he begins to keep his door bolted shut.

The closed door reverses Hazel and Hawks's roles: once the door closes, Hazel is figuratively blinded. In the coming chapters, the dramatic irony is sustained as he remains in the dark about Hawks' eyesight. This represents his unwillingness to accept the truth about himself and the world around him. Drawn to Hazel's eyes, Sabbath is enchanted by his figurative blindness: "[His eyes] don't look like they see what he's looking at but they keep on looking." Unlike for Hazel, the closed door has a liberating effect on Hawks. Once the door closes, he's free to acknowledge his eyesight.

Sabbath is, of course, in on her father's secret. She suggests that he tell Hazel "how [he] blinded [himself] for Jesus." The second time Hazel shows up at their door, Hawks shows him a newspaper clipping with the title "EVANGELIST PROMISES TO BLIND SELF." When Hawks express annoyance at the fact that Hazel leaves with the clipping, Sabbath taunts her father by saying that he's "got another clipping." This one tells the story of how Hawks backed out of the plan outlined in the first clipping.

Until Hazel finds out the truth about Hawks' eyesight, he feels confused about the preacher's standoffish behavior. Even if he doesn't suspect that Hawks is feigning his blindness, he still feels an impulse to see "behind the black glasses." At the end of Chapter 9, Hazel finally makes it into Hawks' room by picking the lock. He strikes a match near Hawk's face, and "the two sets of eyes [look] at each other as long as the match [lasts]." In this moment, the asymmetry of knowledge that sustains the dramatic irony disappears. This is the last time Hazel encounters Hawks, who subsequently disappears from the action of the novel.