Answer to Question 1
- O. E. Parker is an unsatisfied man who seeks fulfillment and beauty with his tattoos. After his marriage, he becomes gloomier than ever and so whenever Parker couldnt stand the way he felt, he would have another tattoo (par. 72). His life plays out a cycle of restlessness, as he imagines a new tattoo, acquires it, and remains satisfied with it for about a month: then the pattern repeats.
It is interesting to observe that despite the seemingly static nature of this procedure, there is some subtle but steady movement taking place throughout. As we see in paragraph 22, his tattoos progress from inanimate objects (anchors and crossed rifles) through animals (a tiger, a panther, a cobra, hawks) to humans (Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philipwhich demonstrates as well as anything could OConnors contention that He did not care much what the subject was as long as it was colorful).
His encounter at age fourteen with the tattooed man at the fair marks the beginning of his discontentment with life and his wrestling with God. Like the prophet Jonah, Parker runs from the truth he knows intellectually but does not want to accept emotionally. It could be said that the final step in this progression is his leap from the human to the divine with the tattoo of Christ on his back. All of his previous tattoos have been where he could see them; perhaps in having his back tattooed for Sarah Ruth, he has broken free of the limits of his self-preoccupation by reaching out to another, which foreshadows his leap (by the storys end) to seeking God.
Answer to Question 2Parkers employer is rightly dissatisfied with both his performance and his manners since he breaks her tractor on his second day of work and takes off his shirt while he works (breaking the social code for a Southern man in the presence of a lady). According to Parker, this seventy-year-old female employer is too dried up to have an interest in anything except getting as much work out of him as she could (par. 5)and he is right. One of the most comical descriptions in the story is Parkers view of his employer: this old woman looked at him the same way she looked at her old tractoras if she had to put up with it because it was all she had (par. 5). The same might be said of why Sarah Ruth stays married to Parker.
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