ENGL 4310

I realize that we have been talking about "Parker's Back" a lot, and I hope I'm not beating it to death, but the discussion in class on Thursday led me to a sort of theory that, for me, puts this story into perspective a little bit. I was thinking about something that Kay said a while ago in relation to physical stimulus being the cause of emotion. She said that perhaps Parker does not feel a lot of emotion so he puts these marks on his body in order to entice some sort of emotional response. She said this before we were supposed to read the story, so as I was reading that was in the back of my mind. I, however, found the opposite to be true. I felt that Parker had such strong emotions and, for some reason, he couldn't efficiently convey those emotions to the people around him, which is why he was constantly seeking new tattoos. Every time something significant happened, he ran out and got a tattoo as a way of expressing himself. He did this until there was virtually no space left on the front of his body; he had expressed himself to the fullest extent of his capabilities and it still wasn't enough because Sarah Ruth still misunderstood him.

When Parker collides with the tree, for some reason that I am still not sure of, this results in a flood of emotion. So what does he do? He wants another tattoo of course. Parker tells us that he only wanted tattoos in places where he could easily see them, which suggests that they were primarily for his own benefit. The fact that he places a tattoo in a place where likely the only person who will see it is his wife strongly suggests that it is for her and her only. Also, this seems to be the first time that the subject of a tattoo has any significance for him. He is desperately reaching out to her, trying to connect with her, and she doesn't recognize the figure or even acknowledge the fact that this tattoo was the only one placed on his back. This leads me to why I believe Parker was attracted to Sarah in the first place. When he first met her, she had such a strong emotional reaction to his body art that perhaps he thought he had finally found someone with whom he could communicate. Although her reaction may not have been the one he was looking for, perhaps he thought that by doing this selfless thing, by carving an engraving of God onto his back for her, he could finally fill up the emptiness within himself.