Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood brings the issue of religious faith into "clear dramatic focus" as she emphasizes the necessity for salvation through her distortion of the grotesque physical world. Developing this concept of grotesque, O'Connor develops her "vision," one of spiritual confinement, through the "large and startling" and even violent actions and journeys by which the characters are defined. Within these strange settings where absurdities become prison walls, the spiritually devoid characters of O'Connor's imagination scramble to find some kind of meaning that can afford them escape. Using the zoo, the city, and the residents of Taulkingham ...