ABSTRACT
Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood depicts the leading character Hazel Motes' frantic struggle to escape from his own Christian faith. Interactions between Hazel and other characters reveal that not only Hazel but also other characters are somewhat bound to and affected by Christian dogma. Still, these characters act according to their own peculiar sets of values, and communication between the characters often turns out to be quite unsuccessful. In order to highlight the troubling nature of their communication, which can be concurrently disturbing and intriguing to the reader, this article examines how the characters' presuppositions are linguistically triggered and how they are exploited as prompts to the ensuing communication, through being ignored, dismissed, or accommodated by participants engaged in the confabulation.
