Kaori HORIUCHI - JST

American Literature Society in Japan

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37

Kaori HORIUCHI

The Resistance of the

Privatized Body:Tattoosas a Site of Conflict in Flannery

O'Connors "Parkets

BacX'

z Introduction

n attempting to explore the secular, physical aspects of Flannery

O'Connor's "Parker's Back" (1965) in cultural as well as political

terms, one is faced with the scarcity of relevant previous studies.

Because of the Byzantine Christ tattooed on Parker's back, theological inter-

pretations have been the main focus in critical studies of this story, including

the subjects of Catholicism and the icon of Christ.i Concerning the physical

topics, Sue Brannan Walker argues about Parker's flesh and tattoos both

medically and theologically, and Thomas F. Haddox focuses on the relation-

ship between visual matters and Parker's self.2 What seems to be lacking,

though, is a linkage of the body with the cultural and political background of

the story. Despite their convincing argument about the social and political

context of O'Connor's collection of short stories Everpthing T7zat Rises Must

( lonverge, Charles T. Rubin and Leslie G. Rubin mention that "`Parker's

Back'

will not figure prominently in the political discussions that fo11ow because we

feel that its themes are less tirne bound than the other stories in the collection"

(223). However, Parker's career in the US Navy, for instance, deserves more

attention. Although Patricia Yaeger proposes a new analysis of his tattoos and

Arnerican militarism, her argument, closely interwoven with current issues,

only deals principally with the contrast between localism and nationalism. In

The Journai of the American Literature Society of Japan, No. 9, February 201 1 .

@ 201 1 by The American Literature Society of Japan



itmericanMteratureSociety in Japan

38 Kaori HORIUCHI

fact, it is important to note Parker's career as a sailor in the context of the

national authority over the individual in the Cold War era. In addition, histattoos, previously regarded as a medium for his religious fu1fi11ment (toborrow Karl-Heinz Westarp's term), are suggestive of the selffs relation with

the privatized body. That is because, in the cultural history of tattoos, one's

identity and capitalism, accompanied by the materialistic value of bodies, aredeeply entwined. This essay approaches these issues by examining

"Parker's

Back" to show how the protagonist's subject vacillates between social norms

and the privatized body.

1. The Tattooed Body and the Turbulent Subject

Suffering from a fatal disease, O'Connor attached importance to the sense of

the body when she wrote fiction. She said that "[t]he

first and most obvious

characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen,heard, smelt, tasted, and touched" (Mystery and Manners [MM] 91). ForO'Connor, bodies might have seemed uncontrollable. She always showed a

positive and humerous attitude toward her diseases, whereas "[s]he

admitted

that the crutches she had to use sapped her energy" (Cash 312). It may safely

be assumed that her earnest hope fbr release from her body is reflected in theheaviness of the fiesh that aMicts protagonists 1ike Asbury Fox in "The

Enduring Chill" (1958). In

"Parker's

Back," through the connection between cultural identity and

tattooing, O'Connor fbregrounds the bodily problems that concern the Amer-ican ideal self.

"The

representation of tattooing in popular culture in theUSA," as Alan Govenar points out,

"has

been a barometer of public opinionand its relationship to the growth of the tattoo profession" (212).3 WhenParker is fourteen years old, he sees a perfbrmer tattooed from head to fbot ata fair held near his home,

"flexing his muscles so that the arabesque of men and

beasts and flowers on his skin appeared to have a subtle motion of its own"

(Cbllected Pforks [Cop 657). He is fascinated at the spectacle of the various .tattoo pictures and feels that there is something extraordinary about

"the fact

that he exist[s]" (658). Atfected by the show, Parker begins to get tattoos onthe front parts of his body in order to transform himself completely.

To further understand the significance of tattoos in this story, it seems

reasonable to suppose that the fu11-body tattooed performer is an exhibit at a




The Resistance of the Privatized Body 39

freak show, although O'Connor carefu11y uses the word "fair."

Govenar shows

in fu11 detail how Artoria Gibbons, a successfu1 entertainer, decided to join thecircus. In an interview, Gibbons says,

"one day a carnival came to the village,

and after I done my chores, me and my sister went to see it. We stood outside

the freak show and a nice looking guy started to talk to us. I asked could we

come in for free. We didn't have any money and he said okay. Well, him and

me got to talking, He told me the show didn't have a tattooed lady, and then

asked me ifI would like to be one" (Govenar 223), Freak shows, which exert

an influence on one's consciousness of the body, fbrm the lowest stratum of

hierarchy in American society, at least in part. As Rosemarie Garland

Thomson maintains, "The

American ideal self at the top of this hierarchy

[based on ability of the body] was an autonomous producer-selflgoverning

and selfrnade-a generic individual capable of creating his own perfected selP'

(64). This notion of "the

American ideal self' reveals that freaks' personalbodies struggle against the collective social views, but at the same time freaks

accept the commodification of their bodies as a usefu1 means to survive and to

be accepted by others. Their bodies, wavering between resistance and compro-

mise, throw the established order of self into confusion.

By counting backwards from Parker's age (28 years old), one can determine

the year he went to the fair was 1949 or 1950. Although there is a possibility

that Parker sees freaks there, O'Connor seems to cautiously avoid this likeli-

hood. In Carson McCullers' T7ie Member of the PVledding (1946), for example,

Frankie Addams feels uneasy about being a freak. O'Connor also depicts a

herrnaphrodite in a show tent in "A

Temple of the Holy Ghost" (1954).Genetics made striking progress in the twentieth century, and the shows that"born

freaks" joined, as a result, waned to a close in the 1960s. Margo DeMello

claims that "[w]ithout

born freaks, the sideshows had to find something else to

capture the public's interest, and tattooed attractions fit the bill perfegtly"

(55). Her words o{fer valuable suggestions as to the historical background of

this story. One of the reasons why O'Connor took up tattoos instead of the

physical deformity as a bodily charaoteristic of the protagonist is closely

related with the situation prevailing at the time. Tattoos in "Parker's Back,"

overlapping with freaks' status fbrged in American society, resist hierarchy

and exploitation, even while making an accommodation with the dominant

forces of society.




40 Kaori HORIUCHI

Interestingly, Parker has no desire to have a tattoo on any place he cannot

readily see himself. For him, turning his eyes to his body helps greatly to

confirm his sense of self, because among the five senses, visual sensation has the

strongest effect on objectification. According to DeMello, the tattoo is a

powerfu1 symbol of identity, and the primary source of the tattoo fortifies "in

terms of the literal ability to `write

oneself' and subsequently to be `read'

byothers" (12). Parker often takes off his shirt and intentionally exposes his

tattoos to the gaze of peeple. Such a self-consciousness of visibility indicates

that the body is set down by the relation of seeinglbeing seen. We usually

recognize our body and existence through the eyes of others. While tattoqs

awaken a sensitivity in him to visibility, his sense of sight brings about anxiety

about his subject. Although tattoos are supposed to be a symbol of his identity,

we are told, "it

was himself he could not understand" (CJV 655). Hiscomplicated subject raises a question regarding the period of his military

service, during which he continues to cover his body in more tattoos,

2. The Fugitive from the Body Politic

Insofar as Parker lives in postwar America, it is impossible to ignore theinfiuence that the nation exerts on him. O'Connor depicts Parker's enthusiasmfbr the dazzling spectacle of the fu11-body tattoo at the fair: "Parker

was fi11edwith emotion, lifted up as some people are when the fiag passes" (657-58). The

perfbrmer's body stands in sharp contrast with the body politic symbolized bythe flag and its patriotic associations, for Parker distinctly tends to be on the

side of the individual rather than the nation. Aftera while, he joins the navy.

His enlistment does not originate from his patriotic feelings but rather fromthe private reason that he would like to flee from the church, that is, the

structure of society, where his mother drags him as a result of his loose

conduct. We can assume from the chronology of the story that the era of the

Korean War is drawing to a close. In spite of the fact that many military men

wanted to remove their tattoos after World War II, "patronage

of tattooing

apparently swelled again" during the Korean War (Govenar 229).

Another possible reading is that Parker joins the navy at the beginning of the

Vietnam War, the time when O'Connor was writing "Parker's

Back." Accord-ing to Janet S. Rose, the practice of tattooing was

"revived in the 1960s, with

the interest in Asian cultures brought about by the Vietnam conflict" (69). In





that case, the historical setting of the story may coincide with a revival of

tattooing during the 1960s, Yaeger observes that Parker gets tattoos wherever

he goes during his military service as "his

skm is encrusted with the silty

insignia of other nations. O'Connor insists that Parker's earliest tattoos bear

the stamp of American militarism. His supernumerary tattoos refiect

America's colonizing adventures" (494), In fact, Parker seems to acquire an

imperialist subjectivity based on colonialism, but I would like to emphasize

that his tattoos' elfect is "not of one intricate arabesque of colors but of

something haphazard and botched" (CJV 659). Inconsistent as it may seem,

this effect is a good illustration of his body's resistance against the cultural

homogenization. The native tattoo, as Stephen Pritchard elaborates in his

study about the Maori tattoo, "gains

its power as a sign of opposition to

Eurocentrism" (340). Parker's tattoos are resonant with this remark insofar as

they are unsystematic and multivalent.

Explained in this way, the physical factors disclose something more com-

plex, namely the problem of ene's distinct identity as a serviceman, which is

imposed on the individual by the navy. Even though America is a dernocratic

state, the body politic is apt to dominate over the private sphere of a personand make it hislher duty to obey its rules. In the mid-1960s, American military

intervention in Vietnam had becorne serious. Inevitably, America had to

increase the strength of its army, so that the individual bodies, suited to the

military standard, were tacitly asked to contribute to the body politic. During

this era, Tom Lehrer, a well-known satirical singer-songwriter, sang an ironicsong

"Send in the Marines" (1965), which illustrated the stance of the

American government. The song criticized the government for irresponsibly

continuing to dispatch bodies to the battlefront and provides an aecurate

reflection of the social climate of the era. Given this social climate, it is no

accident that O'Connor makes Parker join the navy. As a number of critics have pointed out, the designs of Parker's tattoos hold

the possibility of various interpretations.4 The front of Parker's body is almost

completely covered with various tattoos; nevertheless, he is not satisfied with

them.

After one of his furloughs, he didn't go back to the navy but remained

away without othcial leave, drunk, in a rooming house in a city he did not




42 Kaori HORIUCHI

know. His dissatisfaction, from being chronic and latent, had suddenly

become acute and raged in him. It was as if the panther and the lion and

the serpents and the eagles and the hawks had penetrated his skin and

lived inside him in a raging warfare. The navy caught up with him, puthim in the brig fbr nine months and then gave him a dishonorable

discharge. (CW 659)

There is a suggestion here that animal tattoos, including eagles as the national

emblem of the United States, stir up displeasing reactions and destabilize his

identity. As I have mentioned, Parker's tattoos implicate both the meanings:

the homogenization of culture and the subject's resistance against it. To be

more precise, his subject is torn between the national ideology and private

ideals. However, it is necessary to remember that his admiration for the

performer's fu11-body tattoo at first came from its exceedingly personal appeal.

Tattoos in this story take on the importance of personal standing in contrast to

the standardization of individuals imposed by the body politic. The navy keeps

Parker in custody fbr nine months. It is no exaggeration to say that O'Connor

is quite conscious of the social norms and their institutions aiming to control

the indiyidual and one's privatized body. O'Connor not only provides a voice

for the many discontented people living under the rule of Cold War America

but also casts light on the covert coercion of the body politic. In the scene

where Parker sits down on the steps with Sara Ruth, his future wife, the

narrator rematks, "Long

views depressed Parker. You look out into space 1ike

that and you begin to feel as if someone were after yeu, the navy or the

governmertt or religion" (661). We should not overlook that O'Connor does

not use the pronoun "he,"

but "you" as the subject of the second sentence.

Here the plight of the hero could be a plight of anyene whose private life is

subject to shadowy pressure by huge organizations.

3. Capitalism and the Consumption Culture

Based on what we have seen so far, new questions emerge necessitating a

consideration of consumption culture in postwar America. Jon Lance Bacon's

analysis of politjcal and cultural problems makes meaningfu1 contributions to

this subject. He demonstrates that O'Connor is aware that "[c]onsumers who

identify themselves with products, or with the imagery used to advertise these





products, will be disappointed and betrayed in their search for selftrealization"

(125). His well-reasoned argument, however, contains no mention of

"Parker's Back." Needless to say, there is no global market that is completely

separated from the body politic in the Cold War era. In opposition to

socialism, the American government embraced capitalism as the political

ideology. As a result, consumer society, typified by department stores or

suburban life, rapidly developed throughout the country. In what follows,

then, the word "capitalism"

will be used not in the sense ef an entirely free

principle of economics but of an ideological sociai construct.

After his marriage to Sarah Ruth, Parker is employed as a kind of handy-

man. The employment relationship is expressed best by the narrator when

O'Connor writes that "this

old woman looked at him the same way she looked

at her old tractor-as if she had to put up with it because it was all she had"

(CPV 656). The important point to note is that Parker's body, in conjunction

with the motor vehicle, symbolically represents capitalism, since it is com-

modified and passes into the employer's possession. Thus, O'Connor fbre-

grounds the materialization of bodies in this modern industrial society based

on capitalism.

Referring to the new forms of labor as a charaoteristic of the twentieth-

century modernity, Gail McDonald writes, "You

know that you are easily replace-

able since your work involves no special skill" (1OO). Such replaceability of the

privatized body is shown in the old woman's emphatic warning that "if

[Parker] couldn't keep his mind on what he was doing, she knew where she

could find a fourteen-year-old colored boy who could" (CIV 665). As a further

example of this matter, it is usefu1 to examine the following sentence from the

scene in which Parker tries to get close to Sarah Ruth: "Her

rnother did not

seem to mind his attention to the girl so long as he brought a basket of

something with him when he came" (662). Sarah Ruth's body is also regarded

as an object exchangeable for something material. That is to say, twentieth-

century modernity and capitalist exchange usurp the place of one's singularity.

When considered in this light, the meaning of tattoos, intertwined with the

question of consumer society, figures prominently. Tattoos at the fair, as

mentioned above, assume aspects of both resistance to social norms and

commercial value. Given the context in which the protagonist of "Parker's

Back" drives to "the city, fifty miles distant" (666), an article in the November




44 Kaori HORIUCHI

6, 1964, issue of 71me becomes especially interesting. Gurney Breckenfeld'sreport on diMcult situations in modern life affbrds factual evidence to show

that tattoos became pervasive in the postwar period. The rapid development ofsuburban areas caused relocation of industrial and commercial activities from

urban districts. Consequently, problems connected with blighted cities gradu-ally came to light. By way of illustration, Breckenfeld cites the case of Boston.Appointed by Mayor John F. Collins as the head of city's redevelopment,

Edward J. Logue prornoted urban renewal projects, ene of which was to"replace

the flophouses, burlesque theaters, bordellos and tattoo parlors of the

Scollay Square area with a complex ofhandsome federal, state, city and privateoMce buildings" (53; emphasis added). Therefore, particular attention should

be given to the fact that there were numerous tattoo studios in city areas and

that the authorities eagerly attempted to exclude them as disreputable.

With regard to commercialism, advertisements naturally form an important

element of consumer society. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that visual effects

rather than conventional linguistic ones had become widespread since the 1950s

(Lowe 53-54). DeMello's observation helps to reveal the tattoo's position inmodern advertising:

In 1956, . . . the Marlboro cigarette manufacturer was seeking to

expand its market from its mostly female target audience to a male

consumer base. Advertisers created the Marlboro Man, a tough-guy type

with a tattoo on the back of his hand. The campaign was so successfu1 that

Marlboro received hundreds of letters from tattooed men who not only

smoked Marlboros but also asked to pose for future ads. (13)

A commercial value for tattoos is discovered here in a quite different sense

from that fbund in the freak show, As McDonald makes clear, in the modernworld,

"consumer

desire, abetted by the messages of advertising" is voracious:"We

want something" and thus "We

work for it" (102). One may recall in thiscoimection that

"The

only reason Parker works at all [is] to pay for moretattoos" (Cor 658). On account of his willingness to work for commodifiedtattoos, his body becomes one tooth on a giant cogwheel of consumer society.

Paradoxically, though, his growing dissatisfaction, I argue, connotes another

aspect of tattoos-the resistance to the public systems-and his subjective





desire to imitate the performer's privatized body.

The accidental encounter with Sarah Ruth provides a valuable example for

probing into Parker's opposition to capitalism. When, by chance, he is fixing

his truck in her garden, he realizes by intuition that she is watching him from

somewhere. In order to lure her out, he jumps up and down and flings his hand

about "as

if he had mashed it in the machinery" (656). His pretense that his

body is jeopardized by a capitalistic machine seems to be, among other things,

a gesture of resistance against the domination ever the privatized body. In

addition, it may be worth noticing that when he was in the navy, he "seemed

a natural part of the grey mechanical ship, exceptfor his ayes" (658; emphasis

added). This statement also suggests that Parker's body privately stands

against the system of industrial society.

4. The Vulnerability of the Private Subject

Another important issue for Parker's private identity is the question of his

relationship with Sarah Ruth. "Parker's

Back" begins with the portrayal of

Sarah Ruth, the fanatical daughter of a Straight Gospel preacher: "She

was

plain, plain. The skin on her face was thin and drawn as tight as the skin on an

onion" (Cva 655). As Edward Kessler and Sarah Gordon both point out,

O'Connor seems to reject Sarah Ruth's Manichean refusal of the flesh by

means of comical descriptions (Kessler 77-83, Gordon 250). William Frank

Monroe, although his general obseryations about Sarah Ruth are rather

conventional, indicates that there is in her "a

hunger fbr the physical" (106).Certainly, Parker's suspicion about her various claims is shown in the early

part of this story: "she

actually liked everything she said she didn't" (655).Throughout this story, there are a number of references to her complex

character, and yet little attention has been given to her ambivalent relation to

social systems. Andre Bleikasten maintains that Sarah Ruth's function is "to

discipline the unruly male, to cure him of his extravagant fantasies and make

him conform to the accepted standards of a cultural order, and that, in this

role, she performs a socializing (or `civilizing') task often assigned to woman

in American fiction" (13). His important analysis, however, fails to take into

consideration the backdrop of the family ideal in the Cold War era.

Postwar American society encouraged people to marry and have a family,

fixing their residence in new suburban areas. The birthrate rose throughout the




46 KaoriHORIUCHI

l950s, and the so-called baby boom, which had begun during World War II,

continued afterward. These elements of the postwar American historical

context are closely reflected in Parker's life. Parker and Sarah Ruth constitute

a typical nuclear family, with their house located on a high embankment

oyerlooking a highway and with the wife pregnant. It is Sarah Ruth, not

Parker, who is obsessed with the institution of marriage. For women, to quoteElaine Tyler May,

"Independence

might have led to a rebellion against the

domestic role, or an active rejection of the status quo. But in the cold war era,

such challenges to the prevailing ideology were highly risky ventures" (183).When Parker tries to begin a sexual relationship with Sarah Ruth, she says,"Not

until after we're married" (663). Vital, moreover, is the following

passage:

They were married in the County Ordinary's oMce because Sarah Ruththought churches were idolatrous. Parker had no opinion about that one

way or the other. The Ordinary's oMce was lined with cardboard file boxesand record books with dusty yellow slips of paper hanging on out of them.

The Ordinary was an old woman with red hair who had held oMce fbrforty years and looked as dusty as her books. She married them from

behind the iron-grill of a stand-up desk and when she finished, she said

with a fiourish, "Three

dollars and fifty cents and till death do you part!"and yanked some fbrms out of a machine. (CJV 663)

The first point to notice is that Sarah Ruth gets a marriage certificate in a

government oMce. Notwithstanding her extremely personal religious faith, she

blindly accepts the public authorities. Furthermore, allusions to capitalism and

modern industrialism can be detected in the Ordinary's attitude concerning the

fee and the certificate-issuing machine. Reflection on these references to money

and technology will make clear that Sarah Ruth embraces the ideology of

postwar America more deeply than most critics have assumed., The upshot of

all this is that both private and public spheres coexist in her subjectivity.

Having observed various sociocultural aspects ef Sarah Ruth's characteriza-

tion, it is then possible to examine Parker's identity in more detail. Parkerbecornes fed up with his fundamentalist wife and intends to get a new tattoo inorder to dispel his dissatisfaction. However, instead of ignoring her, he decides





to select a religious design in order to attract Sarah Ruth's attention. When he

turns over the leaves of the religious art book, searching for a new tattoo at the

shop, Christ's eyes are exaggeratedly described so as to create a religious

atmosphere: "On

ene of the pages a pair of eyes glanced at him swiftly. Parker

sped on, then stopped. His heart too appeared to cut off; there was absolute

silence. It said as plainly as if silence were a language itself, GO BACK" (CM667). He makes up his mind to choose a tattoo of

"the

haloed head of a flat

stern Byzantine Christ with all-demanding eyes" (667). From a theological

point of view, he is now, to borrow George A. Kilcourse's phrase, the"Christ-bearer"

(291). The change in Parker caused by the icon of Christ is

described this way: "his

dissatisfaction was gone, but he felt not quite like

himself. It was as if he were himself but a stranger to himselP' (CM 672). In

O'Connor's fictional scheme, a religious awakening is brought about for

Parker by a tattoo as the Incarnation. Aside from that, his extraordinary

feeling is attributed to a change in his sense of the body. An additional reason

why this story has a strong religious atmosphere is that Parker's name derives

from two Biblical figures: Obadiah, a Minor Prophet, and Elihue, who ex-

pounds the teaching of God to Job.S Refusing to utter his own Christian

names, however, Parker always abbreviates them as O. E. When he cpmes

home with the tattooed Christ on his back, Sarah Ruth furiously shuts the door

and does not allow him to enter the house until he speaks his name in fu11.

Parker, bewildered, turns his head as if he expected someone behind him to

give the answer. Then, he whispers his narne:

Parker bent down and put his mouth near the stuffed keyhole. "Obadi-

ah," he whispered and all at once he felt the light pouring through him,

turning his spider web soul into a perfect arabesque of colors, a garden of

trees and birds and beasts.

"Obadiah

Elihue!" he whispered. (CJV 673)

The utterance of his fu11 name is usually regarded by critics as a sign of his

newly discovered Christian identity.6 This revelation is rooted in the Christian

principle. In Christianity, the Logos, the principle of divine reason, takes flesh

in the figure of Jesus Christ as the Word of God. Working on this assumption,

it seems that O'Connor emphasizes the ultimate power of language more than




48 KaoriHORIUCHI

that of the body. In addition, "a

garden of trees and birds and 6easts" isreminiscent of the Garden of Eden. This Biblical connotation recalls the scene

where Sarah Ruth eats an apple "with

a kind of relish of concentration" (661).Thus there is fairly general agreement about Parker's bodily meaning as an"Edenic"

garden.7

However, it is worth noting that O'Connor uses the term "arabesque."

As

Anthony Di Renzo accurately remarks, the quoted scene is fu11 of a "highly

sensual imagery" (54), albeit a religious ene. Parker's remarkable feeling isbased on his physical sensations as well as on his spiritual awakening. Along

with his Christian interpretatien, Michel Feith observes that an arabesque

suggests "Oriental

carpets, which in the Muslim tradition represent Paradise"

(99). The word "arabesque"

is also applied to a broad variety of winding,

twining vegetal decorations. Intertwined flowing lines, as "a

sensual visual

medium" (28) in the words of Ella Shohat, evoke a sensuous image associatedwith the physical awareness ofbodily presence. Vital, moreover, is the fact thatthe image of

"arabesque"

in this story originates from the fu11-body tattooed

performer, whom Parker saw at a fair when he was fourteen years old. As we

have noted earlier, the Performer's various tattoos foreground "the arabesque

of men and beasts and flowers" (Cva 657). There is great discrepancy betweenthe perfOrmer's body as an exhibition in a fair and a newly incarnated

Christianity. Parker is faseinated with the performer's physical beauty, whichevokes paganistic visual pleasure.

"Arabesque"

can be considered as a kind of

voluptuousness deviating significantly from Christian stoicism. The feeling

Parker experienoes in the passage above indicates the ecstasy of an intense

bodily sensation, which should precede the conceptualizing activity of the

Logos. Here, the metamorphosis of self, the "opening"

of an ego toward the

exterier world, accompanies a change in physical sensations that are not

generally endorsed by Christian idealism.

The last point to be discussed is Sarah Ruth's flat refusal to look at the Christtattoo. Parker's name offers the key to an understanding of her defiance. Inactual fact, his name is linked with three public organizations. When Parkerlooks at long views, he feels as if someone is after him, the navy or the

government or religion. These institutions can all be fbund in the scene where

Parker tells Sarah Ruth his name for the first time: "He had never revealed the

name to any man or woman, only to the files of the navy and the government,





and it was on his baptismal record whioh he got at the age of a month" (CM662). His private physical experiences in having tattoos as the sites for

resistance cannot be kept separate from the larger social systems. Whether or

not the resistance of the individual eventually turns out a failure is an

important but diMcult question.

The victory of a private person's resistance is unachievable on the grounds

that the priyate subject, attempting to stand against the dominant social order,

ultimately has to deny its own violence in order not to bring about an alternative

imposed order. Parker's subject, compelling Sarah Ruth to look at the Christ

tattoo, has a desire for domination over her. As May points out, "In

spite of the

togetherness ethic that stressed mutual decision making and `companionate

marriages,' postwar Americans believed wholeheartedly that men should rule

the roost" (88). As a result of his bodily experience, Parker stubbornly tries to

impose the nuclear family system on the private relationship with Sarah Ruth.

The rejection by his wife, who stands in both public and private spheres, carries

out the necessary function of hindering the restoration of controlling social

norms. A contextualization in which "religion"

is included among public

systems serves as evidence of O'Connor's ethical attitude concerning the

relation between social institutions and private persons. This attitude results

from her consciousness as a writer "who

looks on fiction as an art and who has

resigned himself to its demands and inconveniences" (MM 171).8

"Parker's

Back" ends with Parker "crying

Iike a baby" vvho has not acquired a

language yet. His tears are connected to a profoundly defenseless sense of self at

the bodily level. Ifhis subject is established too firmly, the violence toward others

will be re-established in the fbrm of his desire to be a victor over his reproachfu1

wife. His private subject, for that reason, should continue to vacillate. A private .identity cannot be permanent in a world where public systems and normative

ideologies prevail. Even so, what is important, paradoxically, is to reveal the

vulnerability of subject, which is represented by his tears, as something positive

rather than to show the triumph of his private resistance. This is nothing less than

strong proof for the value of the individual's defiance.

Notes1 Dennis Patrick Slattery explains that the icon reveals the intimate relation-




50 KaoriHORIUCHI

ship of God to man, and "the

imperfect body that man possesses now, in ai1 of its

mortality, is promised a transfiguration through the transformed body expressed bythe icon's image" (120). 2 In Walker's view, the tattoo of Christ is linked with O'Connor's diseased

body (152). Haddox points out that the attempt to fashion a sense of selfhood fromvisual spectacle ultimately fails in this story (412). 3 There isa fair amount of evidence that tattoos came into fashion. Tennessee

Williams' The Rose 7-tittoo (1951), for example, was made into a film in 1955.Inspired by the film, Perry Como's song with the same title (1955) gained popular-ity. Additionally, in ( hase a Crooked S7tadow (1958), a suspense film, Richard Todd

reveals a tattoo on his wrist in order to prove his identity. In 1956, Popeye, the most

popular sailor in America, wearing an ancher tattoo on his arm, appeared on a

television prograni fbr the first time. This work was a theatrical version, but the

original television series were first produced in 1960.

4 Westarp, for instance, refers to the changes in the tattoo motifs as the story

develops: Parker begins to prefer animals and human figures to lifeless designs 1ike

anchors or rifles, and finally he chooses the portrait of Christ. In paticular, Westarp

draws attention to a relation with the evolutionary theory of Teilhard de Chardin,

in whom O'Connor took a great interest (88-96). 5 For a discussion of the connection between Parker's name and the Biblical

allusions, see Jordan Cofer (30-33). 6 Gordon provides illuminating commentary on Parker's Christian names.

Although Sarah Ruth's demand, Gordon declares, "will

allow Parker to discover his

true Christian and prophetic identity," she is not "the

appropriate spiritual guide for

Parker" due to her later denial of the Christ tattoo (249). 7 Michel Feith argues the image indicates "the

transposition of the notion of

completeness from the physical to the spiritual realm, from body to `soul'" (99).

Helen R. Andretta maintains that "The garden imagery alludes to the first garden

enveloping the highest level of earthly life, intelligent being, composite of body andsoul in the image and likeness of God" (59). Although both critics are concerned

with the physical aspect, in their study the main stress fa11s essentially on the

spiritual one.

8 O'Connor repeatedly mentions that a fiction writer's nature and the Christian

state are seldem compatible, but that "[t]he

fiction writer presents mystery through

manners, grace through nature" (MM 153).





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52 KaoriHORIUCHI

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