Who can dare say they have never encountered a conflict? No one is without conflict; there will never be a person who says they have never faced a problem. What is a conflict? Most think an opposition or a struggle of some nature. It can be that and more, to state it simply its man vs. anything; that anything can be nature, God, self, and even fellow man. Many of these can be observed in Parker’s Back written by Flannery O’Connor. Parker’s Back is a short story about a man named O.E. Parker who is obsessed with tattoos; the irony is he marries a religious woman who loathes tattoos. In Parker’s Back there are three types of conflict that appear man vs. man, man vs. self, and man vs. God.
Man vs. Man is a conflict that can be seen throughout
…show more content…
self which is parker vs. himself. For example, amid the first stages of the story, O.E. begins to wonder which impulse had caused him to marry and remain with his wife; his temporary conclusion: feeling puzzled and ashamed. “Marriage did not change Sarah Ruth a jot and it made Parker gloomier than ever. Every morning he decided he had had enough and would not return that night; every night he returned. Whenever Parker couldn’t stand the way he felt, he would have another tattoo, but the only surface left on him now was his back”( O’Connor 5). The quotation shows one of Parker’s internal struggle against himself; one that the audience can notice from the beginning to the conclusion of the story. Another, example would be at the part when Sarah asks what the O.E. means. First he automatically objects to telling her. He thinks about it and realizes that the only people to know it are the navy, the government, “baptismal record” and his mother. Then he says to her “you’ll go blab it around,” He does in the end tell her what the letters in his name stand for. (O’Connor 4-5) This struggle with himself is not as big as the last one but it still shows that he did not really want to tell her. Man vs. self and man vs. man can have an impact on man vs. God. The conflict man vs. self-shows the internal …show more content…
God; this particular conflict seems to be hinted throughout the book. For example, when one night Parker’s mother took him to a revival service at church without telling him where they were going; as soon as he realized where he was he pulled away from his mother and left. The very next day he had joined the navy. When the audience reads this a familiar bible story might come to mind. The story would be Jonah; Jonah did not want to do what God had told him to do so he ran away to the sea. The connection is seen by the fact that they both ran away from God and where they ran to, Jonah on a ship going in the complete opposite than what God wanted and Parker to the navy. In addition, after Parker runs his tractor into the tree, he goes straight to the tattoo parlor. In the scholarly journal, "The "All-Demanding Eyes": Following the Old Testament and New Testament Allusions in Flannery O’Connor’s” the author compares Parker to the Bible:
Immediately following the incident, Parker drives straight for the tattoo parlor and, while browsing through a book, passes the Byzantine Christ “with all-demanding eyes” (CW 667). A voice tells him to “go back,” and Parker demands to have the tattoo put on his back (667). Parker with his numinous awareness is responsive to outside forces, much more spiritually attuned than the ardently fundamentalistic Sarah Ruth. This is why Parker “obeyed whatever instinct of this kind had come to him” (672) and steadfastly decided to
Parker lived his life by a couple key principles according to the author, principles that he always followed in every situation. Some of his principles included that he would never kill unless there was a purpose, he would always honor a deal, he would always settle a score to bring balance back to his life, and that liabilities always had to be removed (Stark). Some of Parker’s less poignant principles are that business must come before pleasure, and that he would never allow himself to hate someone. Lastly, Parker adds a final rule to his value system, he vows to never love again, since love makes him vulnerable and blind (Stark 24). These principles make Parkers apparent eradicate actions become more understandable and even appealing. An individual that lives their life in a controlled fashion, with discipline, morals and values is often someone that people will gravitate towards, even though aside from these things, the person’s is someone we would never associate with
Throughout the story Parker is trying to escape reality and as a result becomes entrapped with no hope of escape. He is ashamed of his name and goes by his initials O.E. to prevent people from knowing his real name Obadiah Elihue. He continually shows his inability to accept blame and fully believes his problems are a result of another person’s actions with the first person possibly being the one who gave him his name. He was very rebellious and would not listen or cooperate with anyone. An example of this was his mothers concern over what was becoming of him and her decision to take him to church. “When he saw the big lighted church, he jerked out of her grasp and ran”. It was clear his mother had lost all control of him at this time. At the age of 16 he lies about his age and joins the navy. The story shows his life as a continuous downwa...
The brunt of this success is due to foundation Richardson builds at the beginning of the essay that carries his argument to the end. His illustrative use of compare and contrast is another one of his more powerful literary tools that increases the efficacy of his examples in the early sections of the essay. Ultimately, Richardson’s decisions successfully paint Spider-Man as a Biblical allegory in the minds of his readers, but what about you? The next time you watch The Amazing Spider-Man will you be judging Peter Parker’s moral integrity or accept his repentance at the end of the movie? Or, will you simply continue to see as just that, a
For this assignment I chose to relate man versus himself conflict to my novel Quid Pro Quo, because throughout the story I felt that Cyril MacIntyre constantly felt oppressed because he didn’t have confidence in himself, whether it was about the way he look...
Lea., Thomas D. and Black., David Alan. 2003. The New Testament It’s Background and Message. Nashville, Tennessee: Published by B&H Academic.
"SparkNotes: Their Eyes Were Watching God: Analysis of Major Characters." SparkNotes. SparkNotes LLC, 2014. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. .
Gundry, Robert H., Ph.D. A Survey of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970.
Turner, David L. Matthew: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008.
Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament, An Introduction. 2nd. Edited by Richard Clifford and Daniel Harrington. New York/Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2012.
Parker did not have anyone to help her. She had no husband, no family, or friends that would help her. The essay she wrote make a person see the mental and physical effects in her life. I believed if Parker had the help from someone who cared about her situation she would have been able to prosper. But instead of helping her they turned her away.
Conflict is something everyone experiences in their daily lives; it can happen amongst person’s and their friends, family, and coworkers. Conflict occurs when individuals have a disagreement on a person’s values and beliefs, which could relate to religious or political views. Each person handles conflict differently depending on their personal values, interpretation, and the environment
———. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 2006. Reprint, New York: Harper Perennial: Modern Classics, 1937.
Since Richard Parker is somewhat like Pi, they both were civil beings in their homes/zoo, but when it came to surviving they both acted like wild savages. Richard Parker and Pi have a back and forth conflict with who has the raft, which proves that Richard Parker is a “human”. For example, when Pi states this about Richard Parker, “ For two, perhaps three seconds, a terrific battle of minds for status and authority, was waged between a boy and a tiger,”(Martel 222) it shows that both a human and a tiger want what they want and will do anything to get it. The two characters fighting over the raft can mean that RP and Pi are both humans and tigers. Second, Richard Parker is a human because he shows us fear. In the world we all are afraid of somebody or something. RP shows the overcoming of his fears when Pi states, “ I was still scared of Richard Parker, but only when it was necessary. It is simple presence no longer strained me,”(Martel 247) meaning that Pi had a fear of RP and RP having a fear of Pi and both of them overcoming those
2. The main conflict of this story is a result of the family's financial status. Father's greed, low income, and Pyotr's frustration are key points to the main conflict. The conflict has plagued Pyotr most, the hallucination of abandoning his family is the main conflict in the story.
Conflict is apart of the model of society. It is a very common component of reality and also in stories and other forms literature. In stories, it adds sensation and stimulates the minds the people who are reading it. Characters can be in conflict with another character, an object, or themselves. When characters are having conflicts however it is more than just a mere disagreement but it is a situation in which the characters detect a threat to their physical, emotional, power and status well-being.