Wise Blood Passage

Reflection: This passage shows the main theme of the book by the main character Hazel. It shows how he doesn't want to be told what he is, he wants to find a new identity. That is why he is arguing with the cab driver, he doesn't want to be a preacher or even look like one, thats what his grandfather was and not what he will be. 
Passage:
“Where’d you hear about her? She don’t usually have no preachers for company.” He did not disturb the position of the cigar when he spoke; he was able to speak on either side of it.

          
“I ain’t any preacher,” Haze said, frowning. “I only seen her name in the toilet.”

“You look like a preacher,” the driver said. “That hat looks like a preacher’s hat.”

“It ain’t,” Haze said, and leaned forward and gripping the back of the front seat. “ It’s just a hat.”

They stopped in front of a small one-story house between the filling station and a vacant lot. Haze got out and paid his fare trough the window.

“It ain’t only the hat,” the driver said. “It’s a look in your face somewheres.”

“Listen,” Haze said, tilting his hat over one eye, “I’m not a preacher.”

“I understand,” the driver said. “It ain’t anybody perfect on this green earth of God’s, preachers nor nobody else. And you can tell people better how terrible sin is if you know from your own experience.”

Haze put his head in at the window, knocking the hat accidentally straight again. He seemed to have knocked his face straight too for it become completely expressionless. “Listen,” he said, “get this: I don’t believe in anything.”

The driver took the stump of cigar out of his mouth.  “Nothing at all?” he asked, leaving his mouth open after the question.

“I don’t have to say it but once to nobody,” Haze said.

The drier closed his mouth and after a second he retuned the piece of cigar to it. “That’s the trouble with you preachers,” he said “You’ve all got too good to believe in anything,” and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness.

(Pg- 27,28)