Idolatry in All-Demanding Eyes: A Reading of Flannery O’Connor’s Parker’s Back
Idolatry in All-Demanding Eyes: A Reading of Flannery O’Connor’s Parker’s Back

Summary/Abstract: “Parker’s Back,” Flannery O’Connor’s penultimate short story shows how a simple andordinary man with a Biblical name (Obadiah Elihu) wishes to prove his uniqueness bycovering his skin with a mixed patchwork of tattoos. The last of these is a huge image of Christ with “all-demanding eyes” he wants to wear on his back in order to impress his simple but extremely pious wife. In this paper, I will focus on the recurring images of eyes in Flannery O’Connor’s text, taking into consideration various possible interpretations of seeing and being seen. Sartre’s ideas of “the gaze of the Other” will help my investigations – since I take the story as a study of existential questions. I will further discuss the occurrences of the word “God” and the meaning of the word “idolatry” in the story, as well as the question of tattoos as intended markers of belonging. In the end, I experiment with the presentation of a possible colorful patchwork based on the collection of paralleled phrases and gestures in the text. Can such an imaginary tattoo become the imprint of a reading experience?

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