The Facade of Tattoos Essay examples -- essays research papers

The Facade of Tattoos     In "Parkers Back" by Flannery OConnor, the tattoos O.E. Parker receives are essential to the lectors judgment of him. Furthermore, OConnor suggests them as major symbols throughout Parkers life. Parker, the main character in this recital, goes through the actions of life without really knowing who he is and why he is on the earth. Parker little by little experiences religious conversion and, though tattooed all over the front of his body, is drawn to having a Byzantine tattoo of Christ placed on his back, OConnor was using unusual symbols to convey her sense of the mystery of Gods redemptional power (Shackelford, p 1800). Because of the tattoos, the reader is able to see OConnor reveal the major characteristics in Parkers life and sympathize with this man as he searches for his identity and finds God.     First of all, in order to understand OConnors short story, the reader must look into the background of her life. Parkers Back was the last story written by OConnor before she died at the early age of 39 from the disease of Lupus. Her writings all reflect from her religious background of Catholicism. OConnor wrote brilliant stories that brought the issue of religious faith into clear dramatic focus. She was a devout Roman Catholic living in predominantly Protestant rural Georgia. Her stories are far from pious in fact, their mode is usually shocking and practically bizarre. Yet the religious issues they raise are central to her work (Drake, online vertical file--------------------------------). Time and again in her stories, the spokesmen for a self-satisfied secularism run afoul of representatives of... the God-haunted protagoniststhey hearten an indispensable rolethey act as spiritual catalysts(CLC, p276.). To even the casual reader it would appear that Miss OConnor really had only one story to tell and really only one main character. This principal character is, of course, J esus Christ and her one story is mans absolutely crucial encounter with Him (Drake, p273).Being a devout Catholic, OConnors faith consciously informed her fiction. The difficulty of her work, she explainedis that many of her readers do not understand the redemptive quality of grace, and, she added, dont recognize it when they see it. All my stories are... ... this image OConnor graphically conveys the suffering of Christ incarnate in humanity, and expresses her belief that intersection point with Christ means union with Christs suffering, not escape from suffering into some abstract realm of spiritual blissemphasizing that the raise in consciousness that precedes true convergence is expressed not through external power or dominance over others but, paradoxically, in a melodic line into vulnerability, into suffering, into weakness, into mans essential poverty (CLC p 159). It is in this last scene that the reader becomes sympathetic with Obadiah Elihue, having been driven out of t he house by his harridan wife, listing against the tree, crying like a baby.      Through the descriptions of Parkers tattoos, one can make connections between the "pictures" he has "drawn all over him" and what goes on in his essential life. OConnor uses the tattoo symbols to reveal the growth of the protagonist, for it takes him years to get past his outer image of his body, to examine his own soul. One begins to sympathize with this man, "Obadiah Elihue," as he searches for himself and finds calmness with God.