At the end of the second paragraph, the author says of Parker and ...

[Sportsfan2111]

At the end of the second paragraph, the author says of Parker and SarahRuth: He could account for her one way or another; it was himself he could not understand. How accurate is each part of this assumption?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Why, in your judgment, did Parker marry Sarah Ruth? Why did she marryhim?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[Jane]

Answer to Question 1

• Parker is wrong about Sarah Ruth and right about himself. From their first meeting after his truck broke down on the highway until the storys climactic ending, it is clear that Parker fails to understand his wife. He never sees her clearly, even as he is blinded to himself. He overestimates his physical attractiveness both to his wife and his employer, he never questions why he continually obtains new tattoos, and he fails to consider why after running his whole life, he settles down with a plain, overbearing woman whom he doesnt love.

Despite his attempts to read into Sarah Ruths words and actions, he is consistently unable to interpret her with any degree of accuracy or certainty: Sometimes he supposed that she had married him because she meant to save him. At other times he had a suspicion that she actually liked everything she said she didnt (par. 2). He has neither insight nor opinion into her feelings, even as he had no opinion about their wedding ceremony in the County Ordinarys office which took place there because Sarah Ruth thought churches were idolatrous (par. 72). Still, despite her fervent opinion on several religious and practical matters, Sarah Ruths deeper motives remain hidden from the reader, even as they are for her own husband. She is extremely overbearing and narrow-minded about her interpretation of Christian valuesdisapproving of automobiles, smoking, drinking, make-up, and cussing and the reader, like Parker, wonders what, if any, human feelings lie behind her brazen exterior and harsh doctrinal beliefs.

Answer to Question 2

• These are puzzling questions, especially the second. The opening sentences of the story state Parker understood why he had married herhe couldnt have got her any other waybut he couldnt understand why he stayed with her now. Still, this beginning answer seems hardly satisfactory after we learn later that Parker has had involvements with a number of women (from which he seems to have formed the impression that he is devastatingly irresistible) and that he had no intention of ever getting married. At the beginning of the story, Parker is genuinely disgusted and ashamed with himself for not being able to leave his pregnant wife: he stayed as if she had him conjured (par. 1).

Indeed, this odd couple seems to be grossly mismatched. Although the story suggests they come from similar backgroundslittle education and even less moneythey have little else in common. For reasons even he cannot articulate, from their first meeting Sarah Ruth allures Parker in a way that is much more than merely sexual. From a sermon preached by Father Paul Yerger of the Orthodox Church in 2004, which interestingly enough took Parkers Back as its text: something attracts him to Sarah Ruth; he is hungry for something: to love something greater than himself, to partake of beauty and glory and mystery, like the tattooed man he saw at the fair.
Harder to understand may be Sarah Ruths motive for marrying O. E. Parker. In The Ultimate Heresy: The Heartless God in Parkers Back, Stephen Sparrow suggests one possibility: Sarah Ruth is also a girl who, in the manner of most Old Testament women, expected some day to become somebodys wife, and in spite of O. E.s naturally crude nature, for her there was a certain amount of attraction in that his names initials stood for two Old Testament characters.