Parker's Back

“Parker’s Back” centers around the spiritual transformation of the protagonist: Obadiah Elihue Parker. While at first he resists his calling, he eventually is forced to reckon with it, leading to an inner transformation and a new spiritual identity. The reader sees Parker being pursued by the divine without fully comprehending it. From becoming strangely mesmerized by the tattooed man at the fair, to being compelled to pursue his wife, to his transformative decision to tattoo God on his body, at each pivotal moment of his life he feels compelled in a certain direction without comprehending why. This speaks to the biblical idea of being called by God or pursued by God, Parker’s life seems to be shaped by a divine force.

Parker begins as a man who rejects his spiritual identity, which is symbolized by his refusal to say his full name to Sarah Ruth. In the biblical context, names are infused with meaning. Parker’s first name, Obadiah, means “servant or slave of God,” and his second name, Elihue, means “my God is He.” Parker’s refusal to say his name can be read as a refusal to participate in the divine plan for his life. Furthermore, Parker avoids thinking about spiritual things at all costs. He dodges his wife’s questions and avoids anything that will remind him of a spiritual calling. Even gazing out at a landscape is depressing to him, he states: “Look out into space like that and you begin to feel as if someone were after you, the navy or the government or religion” (516). By placing religion and the navy in the same category, Parker reveals his negative associations with both, and his desire to be free of higher authority.

Parker seeks a sense of purpose and connection to deeper meaning through the accumulation of tattoos. When he sees the tattooed man at the fair as an adolescent boy, he is drawn to “the arabesque of men and beasts and flowers on his skin [which] appeared to have a subtle motion of its own” (513). Without knowing why, Parker is drawn to intricate tattoos, which represent to him a sense of mystery and connection to all things. Despite this, he only gets tattoos on places that are visible to him, showing his stubborn clinging to the physical over the spiritual world. However, despite his efforts, the tattoos never satisfy him for long. This fact represents the principle that spiritual hunger cannot be satisfied through physical transformation.

Finally, Parker is confronted directly with the divine when he crashes a tractor into a tree and sets it aflame. This moment parallels the burning bush where God spoke to Moses and imparted his divine calling. And, like Moses, Parker’s shoes are removed during this encounter. Though no voice speaks to him through the tree, Parker feels the presence of God, and he notes that if “he had known how to cross himself he would have done it” (520). Throughout the story, Parker has been unaware of anything other than the physical world, but at the burning tree he becomes aware that “there had been a great change in his life, a leap forward into a worse unknown, and that there was nothing he could do about it” (521). When Parker drives into town, he looks for a sign when selecting the tattoo, signifying he knows that the divine is communicating with him.

At the tattoo parlor, Parker flips through a book of designs and feels a Byzantine Christ calling to him. He has the design tattooed on his back, the only blank space left on his body. This represents another subtle shift from the seen to the unseen world. Throughout the process, Parker is plagued with visions of the burning tree and reminders of the shift that has occurred in his life. Like many biblical characters, Parker at first avoids his calling. After he gets the tattoo, acquaintances at a pool hall tease him about having found religion. Parker denies this vehemently.

At the end of the story, Parker finally accepts his calling and completes his transformation. When asked who he is, he says his full name, signifying that he is ready to step into this new role. This is a reference to the tradition of biblical characters changing their names to signify shifts in their identity. For example, Jacob became Israel, Abram became Abraham, Simon became Peter, and Saul became Paul. Parker’s first name, Obadiah, means servant of God, and by saying the name out loud he symbolically embraces his calling to deeper meaning in life through serving a higher power.

In the final pages of his transformation, parallels are established between Parker and Christ. When Christ was baptized the light shone down from the heavens on him. Similarly, when Parker returns home there are “two or three streaks of yellow floating above the horizon” and “a tree of light burst over the skyline” (528). He falls against the door “as if he had been pinned there by a lance” (528). The use of the word lance recalls the lance that pierced Jesus’ side while he hung on the cross. Now, Parker has completed his transformation. At the beginning of the story, he was lost and purposeless, refusing to acknowledge his identity. Now, with the imagery of crucifixion and baptism surrounding him, he is identified with Christ. This is directly correlated to the Christian concept of salvation, such as stated in Philippians: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (The ESV Bible, Philippians 2:5, Crossway, 2001). Furthermore, Obadiah Elihue Parker’s suffering at the end of the story firmly places him in the ranks of Christianity, full of misunderstood and persecuted figures.