I watched Wildcat, the 2023 biopic about Flannery O’Connor, at the CFAC a few weekends ago, hosted by the Center for Faith and Writing. It was the sort of movie that only intellectuals, film people, and English majors would watch, although some Stranger Things fans may also be the target audience in a weird sort of crossover simply due to Maya Hawke’s starring role as O’Connor.
The movie was interesting, and there are several things I would have liked to say about it. However, as I tried to write a review, I could not stop thinking about “Parker’s Back.” Throughout Wildcat, director Ethan Hawke inserted dramatizations of several O’Connor stories, spanning almost her entire career. These were by far the best parts of the film, in my opinion, and “Parker’s Back” was one of several stories that made it into the movie. If you’d like, you should read it now, it’ll take about ten minutes.
In “Parker’s Back,” a hard, ascetic, and fiercely legalistic religious woman named Sarah Ruth Cates marries O.E. Parker, a ne’er-do-well covered in tattoos, largely because O.E. stands for Obediah Elihue, or “servant of God.” Parker hates his first name, is a raging atheist, and gets tattoos to still the discontentment in his soul. He marries Sarah Ruth Cates not because he loves her, but because he cannot resist her, and he could not have her any other way. Their marriage is unhappy in all the ways you could possibly imagine. Each day he thinks he will leave her and each night he goes back to their near-shack of a house and tries to rile her into loving and respecting him.
Every place Parker can see on his body is filled up with tattoos; after a long life of meaninglessness, admiring each new tattoo offers a short respite. But the longer he’s dissatisfied in his marriage, the more he thinks about getting another one, a large tattoo on his back that only Sarah Ruth could see, one that she might approve of, for once. Maybe something religious? His vague contemplations are shocked into action when he nearly dies in an accident and is given a vision from the Lord(?). In response to this supernatural religious experience, he flies like a bat out of hell to the tattoo shop, and God himself(?) tells Parker which tattoo to emblazon upon his back.
After two days, Parker returns home with a sore and scabbed back, a vision of the web of sin and truth in his soul, a commitment to obey “the eyes on his back,” and a flat, hard-eyed Byzantine Jesus painted on himself. He shows Sarah Ruth, begging for her approval. She berates him for what she sees as his idolatry, screaming and beating his back until Jesus’s face is welted and bleeding and Parker falls out of the house. The story ends as he weeps under a tree.
All of Flannery O’Connor’s stories are like this. They are always unsettling and often disturbing—grotesque. On-screen in Wildcat, the internal brokenness of her characters is less apparent; however, alienation and external brokenness—callous beatings, a thoughtless abandonment, relational rupture, disability of all sorts—come to life in real humans. It doesn’t matter that they’re acting. As I watched each story, (“The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “Revelation,” “Good Country People,” and others) my heart twisted a little, winding up and up the longer the scenes went, until it popped and dropped a heavy weight in my chest.
I’m currently rereading the short story collection “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and I have found that the experience of reading O’Connor’s stories is quite similar to watching them. It’s like watching a train wreck—all-engrossing—except suddenly you realize maybe you were the one in the train wreck and you can’t quite remember how you got that broken leg. It’s attached to you but doesn’t quite feel as if it is until a quick sharp pain at the end reminds you it’s yours.
Alienation and brokenness abound. Redemption, mercy, and grace do too, although seeing them may take microscopic attention, and I think the necessity of said attention is a good thing.
But the point of this musing is not to scramble to see redemption in her work, and I most definitely don’t want to “find the meaning.” Instead, I want to convince you to read Flannery O’Connor for yourself, to sit with her nearly prophetic and certainly convicting prose. I want to convince you to maybe give Wildcat a shot. And, ultimately, I want to ask the possibly unanswerable question I’ve been wondering since I watched “Parker’s Back”— a question you might wonder too, if you read the piece.
When confronted with the face of God do I beat it?
If you don’t wonder this question, I’m sure you’ll have one of your own, because that’s what O’Connor does.

Savannah Shustack graduated from Calvin in 2024 with a major in literature and plans to have the job of “books” one day. Rather like Ken, she is still figuring life out; the job “books” provides plenty of wiggle room, though she’s currently leaning toward being a librarian. Savannah is a New England native who enjoys watching hockey (Go Bruins!) and playing board games—especially ones she can win.
You got me.
Excuse me while I deep-dive into Flannery O’Connor the rest of the afternoon…