| Sumario: | This article analyzes Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Parker’s Back,” focusing on its exploration of global cultural encounters and racial metaphor within the context of American postwar expansionism and the civil rights movement. It examines how the protagonist Parker’s tattoos—acquired during his travels in Asia and elsewhere—symbolize both American imperialism and the complex interplay between Western and Eastern cultural influences, including O’Connor’s ambivalence toward the rising popularity of Buddhism in the United States. The article further interprets Parker’s Byzantine Christ tattoo as a racialized and political symbol reflecting Southern racial tensions and the struggle for Black civil rights, highlighting O’Connor’s conflicted attitudes toward race, suffering, and redemption. Ultimately, the story reveals O’Connor’s cultural anxieties about multiculturalism and social change, portraying a limited vision of salvation that intertwines Christian theology with the persistence of racial hierarchy.
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