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 crucial to the lectors understanding of him. Furthermore, OConnor suggests them as major symbols by dint ofout Parkers life. Parker, the main character in this report, goes through the actions of life without truly knowing who he is and why he is on the earth. Parker gradually experiences religious conversion and, though tattooed all everywhere the front of his body, is drawn to having a Byzantine tattoo of rescuer rigid on his back, OConnor was using unusual symbols to convey her sniff out of the mystery of Gods redemptive power (Shackelford, p 1800). Because of the tattoos, the reader is able to see OConnor reveal the major characteristics in Parkers life and understand with this man as he searches for his identity and finds God.     First of all, in gear up to understand OConnors short story, the reader must t 1 into th e background of her life. Parkers Back was the last story written by OConnor before she died at the early age of thirty-nine from the disease of Lupus. Her writings all reflect from her religious background of Catholicism. OConnor wrote fantabulous stories that brought the issue of religious faith into clear dramatic focus. She was a religious Roman Catholic living in predominantly Protestant uncouth Georgia. Her stories are far from pious in fact, their mode is usually imposing and often bizarre. Yet the religious issues they raise are central to her take a leak (Drake, online vertical file--------------------------------). Time and again in her stories, the spokesmen for a self-satisfied secularism slope afoul of representatives of... the God-haunted protagoniststhey play an indispensable rolethey act as spiritual catalysts(CLC, p276.). To even the casual reader it would appear that Miss OConnor really had only unrivalled story to tell and really only one main character. Th is principal character is, of course, Jesus 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, wear offt recognize it when they see it. All my stories are... ... this image OConnor diagrammatically conveys the detriment of Christ incarnate in humanity, and expresses her belief that convergence with Christ means union with Christs suffering, not escape from suffering into some abstract realm of spiritual blissemphasizing that the cost increase in consciousness that precedes true convergence is expressed not through external power or dominance over others but, paradoxically, in a descent into vulnerability, into suffering, into weakness, into mans essential poverty (CLC p 159). It is in this last scene that the reader becomes sympathetic w ith Obadiah Elihue, having been driven out of the mob by his harridan wife, leaning 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 actual life. OConnor uses the tattoo symbols to reveal the growth of the protagonist, for it takes him age to get past his outer image of his body, to examine his own soul. unmatchable begins to sympathize with this man, "Obadiah Elihue," as he searches for himself and finds peace with God.