Parker's Back

Parker's Back
In Flannery O'Connor's wonderful story “Parker's Back,” the hero has a strange attraction to tattoos and spends his money on new and exciting images. To Parker, the ink he receives makes him feel electric for a week or so, but the newness soon wears off and he must search for a suitable image to make him feel alive again. This search continues throughout the story until he is covered in bright images except for one critical spot: his back.

The story serves as an inspiration for my writing on many levels. Firstly, O'Connor is a master at symbolism without creating paper-thin characters to carry the symbolic load. Parker is a full-fledged human; despite his depravity, he grows through immense and confused suffering. In fact, it is the search that Parker engages in that makes the story especially memorable. Parker's search is a writer's search. He is an on a quest for the true Parker. In fact, O'Connor wrote about her own writing process as a kind of discovery, claiming that she did not know the Bible salesman in “Good Country People” would commit his comic and grotesque act of stealing an artificial leg until a few moments before she wrote the scene.

In “Parker's Back,” Parker finds a picture of Christ that touches him. The description of his reaction reminds me of an ideal reader's reaction to a good story. He feels the eyes of Christ burning through him. The description is wonderfully physical and real in the story, not a mere passing feeling. For me, there is almost always a visceral reaction to a good story. I feel it in the back of my neck and in the skin, just as Parker feels his tattoos come to life.

Parker himself becomes a text in the story, and while he is not an artist, he directs the artists on what to inscribe on him and where to place it. His worst fear is to be misperceived, and this fear causes him some grief and discomfort. The men in the bar think he has become a religious nut, while Sara Ruth mistakes an eagle tattoo on his...