In the following excerpt, Littlefield explores how the materialism of modern society shown in Wise Blood helps articulate O'Connor's major themes of Christian redemption and the grotesque.

Much of the Criticism of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952) has centered around her themes. For the most part, such criticism has illustrated and therefore confirmed, through analyses of her fiction, what Miss O'Connor had said about herself that as a writer she is orthodox Christian (specifically Catholic), that her major theme in fiction is the redemption of man by Christ, and that she depicts the grotesque in society.

But the critics have ignored a significant point of her personal philosophy that appears as a motif in her fiction: that material prosperity has had ill effects on man's spiritual well-being It is basic to the grotesqueness in modern society, it stunts man's Spiritual growth, and it makes man's salvation more difficult...