Hazel Motes boards a train to Taulkinham, Tennessee, returning home after fighting in World War II.

Motes arrives in Taulkinham, finds an address scrawled in a restroom stall, and visits Mrs. Watts.

Motes encounters blind street preacher Asa Hawks and his daughter Sabbath begging for money in a crowd.

Motes grabs Hawks' pamphlets, climbs a set of stairs, and preaches his Church Without Christ for the first time.

Motes buys a used Essex for forty dollars from a car dealership, making it his home and church.

Motes rents a room in Hawks' building and knocks on his door to announce the Church Without Christ.

Hawks hands Motes a newspaper clipping documenting the night Hawks blinded himself with quicklime.

Onnie Jay Holy crashes Motes' street preaching session and declares to the crowd that Motes is a prophet.

Motes kicks Onnie out of his Essex; Onnie slams his fingers in the car door and vows to start a rival church.

Sabbath Hawks moves into Motes' room and tells him her father has left Taulkinham for good.

Enoch delivers a stolen ancient corpse to Motes' room, and Motes hurls it against the wall in rage.

Motes follows Onnie's hired prophet Solace Layfield down a dirt road and runs him over with the Essex, killing him.

A policeman who dislikes Motes' face pushes the Essex over a cliff, destroying the car completely.

Motes walks back to Taulkinham, purchases a bag of quicklime, and blinds himself with it.

Two policemen find Motes collapsed in a ditch; one strikes him with a baton, and Motes dies in their car.

Hazel Motes arrives in Taulkinham after World War II, already rejecting the Christian faith of his childhood, and quickly becomes obsessed with the blind street preacher Asa Hawks. He buys a battered Essex car that becomes his home and pulpit, using it to preach the Church Without Christ across the city. His church attracts no real followers but draws the scheming Onnie Jay Holy, whom Motes violently rejects—eventually killing Onnie's hired prophet Solace Layfield. A petty policeman destroys the Essex by pushing it over a cliff, and the loss of the car destroys Motes' purpose along with it. With nothing left, Motes blinds himself with quicklime and wanders the streets until he collapses in a ditch during a storm. He dies in the back of a police car, leaving the question of his redemption permanently unanswered.

The central events driving Hazel Motes from arrival to death.

Motes tells a fellow train passenger he reckons she thinks she has been redeemed, making her blush.

A taxi driver mistakes Motes for a preacher because of his grandfather's old preacher hat.

A street salesman singles out Enoch Emery in a crowd, drawing Motes' first notice of the young man.

Sabbath Hawks presses a 'Jesus Calls You' pamphlet into Motes' hands, which he tears up and discards.

Enoch Emery trails Motes all the way home through Taulkinham despite being repeatedly told to go away.

Motes stops the Essex in the middle of a road to stare at a roadside 'Jesus Saves' sign.

Enoch takes Motes to a store called the Frosty Bottle, where Motes twice declares 'I AM clean.'

Motes confronts Hawks at his door and demands to know why Jesus has not restored his sight.

Sabbath is discovered hiding in the back of Motes' Essex the morning after she secretly climbed inside.

Enoch watches three picture shows back-to-back at a movie theater before spotting Motes preaching outside.

Motes picks the lock of Hawks' room late at night; Hawks discovers the intruder and throws him out.

Motes stands on the hood of his Essex outside the Odeon Theater and preaches that there is no truth.

Onnie Jay arrives at Motes' preaching spot with his own car and begins competing for the same crowd.

Motes' landlady discovers rocks and broken glass stuffed inside his shoes while cleaning his room.

Motes' landlady discovers barbed wire wrapped tightly around Motes' chest during his bedridden illness.

These events trace the texture of daily life around Hazel Motes, from his tense encounters on the train to his obsessive clashes with street preachers and rival hawkers. Motes is constantly mistaken for a preacher because of his grandfather's hat, a misidentification he furiously denies at every turn. His uneasy relationship with Enoch Emery unfolds through small, strange rituals—trips to the zoo, milkshakes at the Frosty Bottle, and Enoch's habit of shadowing Motes uninvited. Hawks is gradually revealed to be a man of secrets hiding behind his blindness, while Sabbath quietly works her way into Motes' life. Onnie Jay escalates from opportunistic nuisance to direct rival, parking his own car beside Motes and preaching in open competition. By the novel's end, Motes' landlady Mrs. Flood watches helplessly as his acts of self-punishment—rocks in shoes, barbed wire on skin—signal his complete internal collapse.

The supporting encounters and small revelations that texture the story.

Motes lies in his sealed train berth and feels as though he is lying inside a coffin.

Hawks tells the pursuing Motes that he cannot run away from Jesus, planting words that fuel Motes' obsession.

A flashback reveals that young Motes once stuffed his shoes with rocks and walked into the woods to atone.

Enoch leads Motes through the park museum to an ancient human corpse sealed inside a glass display case.

Motes storms out of the museum without getting Hawks' address and strikes Enoch on the head with a rock.

Sabbath tells her father she is infatuated with Motes and begs Hawks not to drive him away.

Motes decides to seduce Sabbath Hawks as a calculated act of revenge against her father.

Enoch receives a sudden revelation while watching Motes preach: he must steal the museum corpse and deliver it.

Motes falls asleep in the Essex and dreams of being trapped in a coffin with a single window.

Enoch steals a gorilla costume from a traveling performer's trailer, then buries all his own clothes in the woods.

Motes wakes up seized by an urgent desire to leave Taulkinham and spread his church in a new city.

A gas station attendant warns Motes the Essex will not survive twenty miles on the road; Motes ignores him.

Motes' landlady initially schemes to marry him and claim his government pension but finds herself genuinely falling in love.

Motes' landlady proposes marriage and he walks out alone into the rising wind of an approaching storm.

Motes' landlady grasps his lifeless hand, closes her eyes, and sees a small pinpoint of light in her mind.

From the moment Motes lies in his sealed train berth feeling entombed, the novel signals that he is a man haunted by his own religious past. A childhood flashback revealing that young Motes once stuffed his shoes with rocks as penance shows that his faith once ran deep, making his later anti-religious fury feel more like a wound than a conviction. His obsession with Hawks, his calculated plan to seduce Sabbath, and his violent rejection of the stolen corpse all expose a man desperately wrestling with belief rather than free of it. Enoch's increasingly surreal arc—culminating in stealing a gorilla costume and burying his own clothes—mirrors Motes' own drift away from the human world. As the Essex deteriorates and Motes loses his drive to preach, his self-destruction accelerates into the storm that finally kills him. Mrs. Flood's vision of a pinpoint of light after grasping his dead hand leaves the novel's central question—whether Motes found grace—deliberately unresolved.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define Motes' spiritual crisis.