In the final chapter of Wise Blood, Hazel Motes's landlord, Mrs. Flood, comes to regard Motes as a kind of religious figure. When she sees the dead Motes at the end of the novel, his face resembles the face of God.

At the beginning of the last chapter, Hazel, who has put out his eyes, wanders around blind, poor, and half-starving from walking all the time. Mrs. Flood thinks to herself about Motes, "To her, the blind man had the look of seeing something." Mrs. Flood at first only wants more rent out of her strange tenant, but then she comes to regard him as a kind of religious figure.

As Motes becomes thinner and thinner and his life is only dedicated to walking, Mrs. Flood believes that Motes is a kind of monk. While she regards herself as a kind of automaton and thinks of her mind as a "switchboard," she thinks Motes's mind contains the infinite. She thinks that "his head [was] big enough to include the sky and planets and whatever was or had been or would be." She urges him to return to preaching.

At the end of the novel, Motes tries to pay for being what he calls "unclean." He walks around in shoes filled with gravel and glass, and he throws away any extra money he has. He dies after being clubbed in the head by a policeman, and Mrs. Flood looks at Motes lying dead on her bed. As she looks at him, she closes her eyes and sees a pinpoint of light. In death, Motes has reached a state of grace and has become purified, and when Mrs. Flood looks at his face, it is like looking at the face of God. Do you think that Mrs. Flood retains this sense of grace, as his image begins to move away from her, and she can't quite grasp it at the end of the story?