Hazel Motes and Midcult Religion in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

Flannery O’Connor’s literary career often focused on Christian religion in the post-war United States. Not only did she seek to convert her audience to Catholicism, but she also frequently critiqued the growing post-war religious awakenings associated with various Protestant denominations. Such critiques are evident in her novel Wise Blood and can be connected to other critical concerns of mass culture among literary figures like Dwight Macdonald. In this paper, I seek to connect Dwight Macdonald’s conception of masscult and midcult to Flannery O’Connor’s criticism of post-war religion in the United States.