PARKER’S BACK by Flannery O’Conner

Yesterday, while preparing lesson plans, I was so exited that I had assigned "Parker’s Back" that I read it first. This was a mistake. I should have read To Build a Fire first because it comes up on my syllabus first. It was a mental brain fart that cost me time an energy that I wanted to use to plan through Friday. Oh, well, reading good fiction is never time wasted.

"Parker’s Back" is about O.E. Parker’s troubled life. Parker is driven to fill every available space on his skin with tattoos. In Parker’s case, these tattoos are an outward symptom of a troubled soul. Each new tattoo will only temporally easy his mental anguish, fill up the gap in his soul that the story suggests God could fill better.

Parker is not an evil man. He is simply troubled. He has an anger problem and would likely, if he were alive today, be diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Instead, he joined the Navy and saw the world, collecting tattoos from every harbor that is boat docked.

The story is full of details, both physical and psychological. The story will be a good example to use to explain a psychological approach to literature. In class, we will try to diagnose Parker by looking at the narrative details; what will the reveal about Parker’s true problem. Does he have Mama issues, God issues? Where does his self-loathing stem from?

The story will also open debate on a favorite subject of mine, tattoos. I love tattoos. I have five. I also love literature about tattoos. The first time I came across this story was in a collection solely composed of writers’ efforts to capture the sub culture of ink: Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos by Kim Addonizio and Cheryl Dumesnil.

O’Connor, Flannery. “Parker’s Back.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 10th ed. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Longman, 2007.