eally had only one story to tell and really only one main character. This principal character is, of course, Jesus Christ; and her one story is man's absolutely crucial encounter with Him (Drake, p273)."
             Being a devout Catholic, O'Connor's "faith consciously informed her fiction. The difficulty of her work, she explained...is that many of her readers do not understand the redemptive quality of 'grace,' and, she added, 'don't recognize it when they see it. All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it... (Becknell p,1769)." Likewise, in "Parker's Back," O'Connor uses the protagonist, O.E. Parker to tell her story.
             Parker's obsession with tattoos begins when he is fourteen and sees a circus performer tattooed from head to foot. "O'Connor emphasizes-rather heavily...the turning point the experience at the county fair representing Parker's destiny...the reader is clearly 'programmed' to see it not only as the beginning of a new life of 'unease' and unrest, but also as a prefiguration of Parker's later conversion (Bleikasten p368)." "Parker had never before felt the least motion of wonder in himself. Until he saw the man at the fair, it did not enter his head that there was anything out of the ordinary about the fact that he existed...but a peculiar unease settled in him. It was as if a blind boy had been turned so gently in a different direction that he did not know his destination had been changed."
             This first tattoo of the eagle symbolizes pride, freedom, and power for Parker; he appears very sure of himself, and because of this, he comes across as conceited. Parker thinks of himself as "attractive," whereas Sarah describes him as "a hea
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