Wise Blood: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Enoch feels sure that the new jesus will reward him in return for his service—he has Hope, which for him means “two parts suspicion and one part lust.” He is not sure what he wants, but feels a basic ambition to better himself until he is the best—he wants to see a line of people waiting to shake his hand someday. Enoch sits in his room all afternoon, waiting, stripping off what remains from the old umbrella until all that is left is a sharpened stick with a carved dog’s head on one end. He thinks it will “distinguish him on the sidewalk.”

That evening Enoch takes the stick out with him to a little restaurant called the Paris Diner, with the nervous sense that he is going to receive an honor. The tall waitress, who doesn’t like Enoch even though he comes in every night, takes his order: a chocolate malted milkshake and split pea soup. Instead of filling it, however, she starts to fry bacon for herself. Enoch tells her he is in a hurry, and she says “go then.” He then changes his order to ask for a slice of the cake, and asks to be placed next to the only other customer there, a man who is reading the newspaper.

Enoch sidles over to the other customer and asks if he might borrow a part of the paper. The man stares, and then hands him the comics section—Enoch’s favorite. Enoch eats the cake and reads, filling up with “kindness and courage and strength.” He then scans the movie ads on the back of the page, and sees a notice for Gonga’s last appearance in the city at the Victory Theater. The light of inspiration strikes his face, as if he were “awakening.” The waitress asks Enoch if he swallowed a seed. Enoch says goodbye, warning her that she might not see him again the way he is. She responds dismissively that any way she doesn’t see him will be fine with her.

Enoch hurries through the pleasant dark streets of the city, enjoying the lights shining in the puddles and the junk in the steamy windows. He stops across from the Victory Theater and watches, flushed with envy, as a line of people steps up to shake Gonga’s hand. Then Enoch darts into the back of the waiting black van. After the feature begins, the “gorilla” gets into the van, and his two “keepers” climb into the cab. They drive away quickly, and the drone of the motor drowns out the unusual thumping noises coming from the back of the van. At a railroad crossing, the van slows, and a small figure slips out the back door and limps into the woods.

In a thicket of pine, the figure lays down the pointed stick and something bulky he had been carrying. He undresses and folds each garment neatly into a stack. Then he digs a hole with the sharp stick. The moon reveals him to be Enoch, his face scratched and with one lump under the eye. He is burning with intense happiness, as he buries the stack of clothes in the trench he has dug. He does this not as a symbol of burying his past self, but because he won’t need them anymore. He takes up the bulky object from the ground and one by one his limbs vanish until he is replaced by a black, shaggy figure—for a moment it has two heads, one light and one dark, and then Enoch pulls on the gorilla costume head, adjusts a few secret straps, and is transformed.

For a while he is still, and then Enoch begins to growl, beating his chest and jumping up and down. He practices shaking hands in the air, and then leaves the woods with the pointy stick under his arm at a cocky angle. “No gorilla in existence,” whether in the jungles of Africa or the richest apartment in New York, is happier than this one, “whose god had finally rewarded it.”

A man and a woman are sitting on a rock, looking out over the city. The man turns and sees the gorilla standing there with its arm outstretched, as if offering a handshake. He eases his arm from around the woman and disappears into the woods. The woman turns, sees the gorilla waiting, and flees screaming. Surprised, the gorilla lets its arm fall to its side and sits down on the rock, staring out over the valley at the uneven skyline.